


Blood from a Mile Away

by HwaetWeGardena



Category: Harry Potter - Fandom, Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/M, Rough Sex, Scarification, Spanking, Vaginal Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-15 18:48:26
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 22,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28693473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HwaetWeGardena/pseuds/HwaetWeGardena
Summary: Hermione Granger, sick of war and wizards, has left her old life behind, re-assimilating into Muggle London without looking back. Antonin Dolohov, a year out from his third Azkaban escape, is simply trying to hide.  Both are going through the motions, aching to feel something, until their annoying, bubbly, well-intentioned best friends drag them both into a nameless, back alley sex club where masks are required and names are withheld.  When old wounds draw them towards each other without their knowledge, the results are volatile. "The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever." – Frank Herbert(Decidedly non-canon.  Time frame moved up to the present.  Consensual.  Antonin x Hermione.  Thorfinn also appears.)
Relationships: Antonin Dolohov/Hermione Granger
Comments: 121
Kudos: 199





	1. "Your Hands Are Empty"

**Disclaimer: I am not J.K. Rowling and claim no ownership over the characters described herein.**

<> <> <> <> <>

Hermione wondered, afterward – when she was sitting in the leather chair in his flat, holding a cup of black coffee and staring into the hottest, bluest part of the flames in the fireplace – why she was like this. Taking a sip and letting it burn its inky path down her throat, she tried to determine at what point she’d become so broken that her most ethereal heights of joy could only have been reached underneath the hands of someone like him. 

It wasn’t his fault – not last night, anyway. He hadn’t wanted to be at that club, either – and had, _clearly_ , never wanted to be found as the man he really was. 

This had all come down to Kenny.

<> <> <> <> <>

“It’s for all genders and persuasions, Jeannie,” he’d said, stabbing a piece of sushi with a fork on their lunch break (he always gave up on the chopsticks about ninety seconds in). “It’s not just a gay club, love – otherwise why would I want to bring you?” He swung the impaled fish assemblage in front of her face, a smelly admonishment.

Hermione, swishing a piece of chicken deeper into the katsu curry, couldn’t believe she was considering this. It was the latest and most lurid entry in the long line of Kenny’s attempts to “bring her out of her shell,” which had varying degrees of success; indoor skydiving, for instance, had not been fruitful – with his height and stick-thin build, he’d soared much higher in the wind tunnel – although she’d enjoyed the pottery painting. As per usual, she’d put too much meticulous effort into her creation and was battling the clock before the place closed for the night, Kenny cackling and guzzling his wine.

How they’d graduated to the “sex club” idea was beyond her. 

“Remind me why I’m tolerating this discussion again?” 

“Because you,” he said, dropping the fork and looking around to make sure no one was hovering outside the breakroom, “need to get fucking _laid_ , my darling.”

She opened her mouth to protest, because she didn’t like the implications of that – had she been snippy, rude, difficult to work with? – but snapped it shut again when she realized that, regardless, he wasn’t wrong. He smirked, pleased in his victory.

Kenny had been one of the greatest things about her new, muggle life, largely because she felt she could be honest with him – or, rather, as honest as she *could* be under the circumstances. He knew she was a war veteran (she didn’t elaborate on which war, and he was kind enough not to press it) – and he also knew that, because of those experiences, she couldn’t _feel_ in the way normal people seemed to be able to anymore. That issue extended to sex most of all, and perhaps he felt that something so violently out of the norm would be cathartic for her. Hermione found herself able to share with Kenny, and to listen to him about his own boyfriends and escapades, in a way that she’d never had a rapport with a female friend – not even Ginny, busy in her own world now, and still resenting her for having left it. 

Kenny knew that Hermione’s longest, most integral relationship failed because the guy couldn’t give her anything even close to what she needed, and he knew the gossip that had gone around about her afterwards – what a “freak” she was, a “monster” even, scarred in a wavering purple line from between her breasts to her pelvic bone. He knew the man’s name, too – Ron. Did Kenny know she was once a part of a “golden trio” that helped to end a massive, horrific magical conflict that had been waged under his nose for years? No, but no one in her new life knew that, and she wanted it that way.

She’d just been tired, in the end. Ron had been all that was keeping her around, but when he’d dumped her, she’d realized that she was going through the motions, for the most part – sleepwalking through her own life, as she’d read once in a dystopian novel. Her parents couldn’t be unobliviated (she’d researched and tried until she’d felt like she must be sweating blood), Crookshanks had passed away, and all of the detritus – Hogwarts, NEWTs, wizarding careers, quidditch, and Rita fucking Skeeter – seemed meaningless after everything that she’d seen. Looking back, as she matured, she felt increasingly that too much of the endeavor had been carried on her own back. She didn’t blame anyone for that, especially not Harry, who – sworn to secrecy – was the only person from her old life to have her current cell number. She just needed a break, and a change of scenery which she now realized was leaning towards permanent. 

Hermione had started going by her middle name – Jean – and had done everything possible to reassume the muggle existence she’d lead until she was eleven. She did still use her wand, mostly to better facilitate cooking, cleaning, and other household tasks, but only when it couldn’t be seen by others. She had also used magic to fake some fancy secondary school records, spent four enjoyable years at a completely “normal” college in the North, and now worked in London for – and the irony was not lost on her – a newspaper. She likely wouldn’t do it forever, but she enjoyed it for now – and the _Post and Courier_ was where she’d met Kenny, who currently, she realized, was still rambling to her about the process of getting into the sex club.

“It’s got no name, really, and is sort of tucked away down below a staircase in an alley – “

“Like a speakeasy?” she asked, a bit mumbly through a bite of curry.

“Precise. Spot on. I’ll have to vouch for you – you can’t get in ‘less you know someone. Before they let you in, you pick out a mask, just for the top half of the face. It’s totally anonymous, see so your prissy little arse won’t have to worry on being recognized and go on about _Oh Kenny! I couldn’t possibly engage in such ribaldry –_ ”

“Allright, that’s bloody well enough – point taken,” she said, chuckling at the wild gesticulations of his Hyacinth Bucket impression and wiping her lips with a napkin before continuing. “How did you get behind the velvet rope yourself, by the way?” She asked him, putting the lid back on her to-go carton with a click.

“Trev used to take me all the time.” He looked down and ran his fingers through his hair, treacle brown. Hermione knew Trevor was a bit of a sore spot, so she moved on quickly.

“Where do people, well, have their fun I suppose? And is this legal?”

Kenny made a vague, noncommital hand motion before speaking.

“As for the sex, it varies. Sometimes people meet up there and venture elsewhere, but there’s a gentleman’s agreement that the club’s rules still apply wherever you go. See, if someone lodges a complaint against you afterwards for anything, you’ll never get back in and nobody wants booted out of Eden if you get my drift.”

“Strange metaphor, considering, but yes do go on.”

“Otherwise there’s different sizes and themes of rooms, like a jungle room, Elvis-like you know, or a Versailles room or – I mean, they get sanitized every day, of course. If they’re not occupied you can look at them and laugh a bit. Sometimes couples go in some of the double-bed rooms with other couples and have a go switching spouses.”

Hermione could guess what her face looked like when she saw Kenny explode in laughter. She shushed him as Donna from Advertising walked by, disapproval in the set of her lips, but he chucked his own trash and continued, more quietly.

“Look pet – you don’t have to do anything at all. This ain’t _Eyes Wide Shut_ per se. Many people just go to drink and observe, and if nothing else it will be an experience.”

“You do always say that.”

“And it is, ain’t it? When’s it not been? And I know you’re about to say you can’t afford it which is why I’m covering your fees. I just want us to go and have fun. _Come on.”_

Their break time was over. She gave him a wry, lopsided, closed-mouthed smile – the one that signaled begrudging defeat, because he was never going to drop this until she tried it. It would at least be something they could giggle about later, she was sure, and the biggest reason she had stopped resisting was because she had nothing to do that night aside from sit on her usual old couch and, just like always, read. 

She sighed and threw up her hands. 

“What time do you want to pick me up?”

<> <> <> <> <>

Hermione hadn’t been sure of what one was to wear to a sex club, nor was she sure that she even particularly wanted to be noticed that evening; thus, as Kenny walked her down the grimy brick staircase to a burgundy-painted wooden door, she was looking fairly classic, yet nondescript. She had on black stiletto heels, a white satin blouse (the top three buttons open, at Kenny’s insistence), and a grey pinstripe skirt that stopped at her knees. Beneath it all she’d donned some intricate, sparkly, pristine white lace underwear, but no one needed to know that but her – it was to help her confidence more than anything, she told herself, as Kenny’s utterance of the password granted the two of them entrance into the lion’s den. 

Kenny and Hermione were then led to a maroon-carpeted holding area by an imposing bald bouncer – he had to be six foot six if he was an inch, she thought, and his nose had been smashed into his face like play-dough. Her attention was dragged from the wordless troll to the vast array of lace half masks on an antique table before her, as Kenny explained the meaning behind the different colors.

“…behind these walls, green is gay, blue is bi, pink is pan, purple means you’re looking for a couple…but black is straight, and unless you haven’t updated me,” he said, picking up a black lace mask and holding it with two fingers by its silk ribbon, as if he didn’t want to be tainted by its basic, milquetoast connotation, “that’s the one you’ll be needing.” 

Helpfully, he volunteered tie it across her eyes and around the back of her elegant chignon, but it wouldn’t stay in place with her updo; she was forced to undo all her earlier work and remove the hairpin (which was carved in the shape of an otter – a gift from Harry). Her wavy tresses fell down both sides of her face past her collar as Kenny asked, “Can you help me tie my lucky green one, love?”

“Of course,” she said, suddenly feeling dizzy, surreal – had she really agreed to this? She stood on her tiptoes to tie Kenny’s mask as he handed their fees to the door ogre.

“Remember,” Kenny whispered, “If you start feeling uncomfortable, just come find me and we can go – but in the mean time try to _enjoy yourself,_ Jeannie Beannie.” 

As the inner door opened, Kenny turned around, took her arm, squeezed it in reassurance, and walked her with not one ounce of shame or fear into the place that Hermione never could have anticipated would change her life.

<> <> <> <> <>

And then, of course, Kenny had promptly imbibed not one but *two* absinthe cocktails and disappeared.

As irritated as she wanted to be, she offered Kenny some wry congratulations on his find – a black-haired, black-suited man whose razor-sharp cheekbones couldn’t even be hidden by his green face mask – in the last moments before before he drug his victim off into the Safari room. (On brand for Kenny, who’d always wanted to go to Africa and who, she was sure, had used the space before.)

“Now, pet, no pouting!” he said, pushing a shot of Jose Cuervo into her hand and booping her on the nose with his index finger, which only deepened her unbidden frown. “You’ll be fine – no one will touch you without your consent. Remember the hand signal that I taught you, and just try to have fun exploring. That bloke over on the wall is your flavor, if I’m not mistaken…”

When Kenny was gone, she stood there, in the middle of the busy ballroom, feeling ridiculous in her pointless professional wear as she watched the other women flounce around in club dresses, rave outfits, flapper costumes, or simply high-rise thongs and pieces of electric tape crossed over their nipples. 

Having nothing better to do, and no way to transfigure her clothes with her wand left at home, Hermione shrugged, downed the tequila, took Kenny’s advice, and explored. Thinking it would be more entertaining with a greater buzz, she retrieved a champagne from the bar (drinks were included in their entrance fee) and snuck around the various forms of chaos around her. She poked her head timidly into a few of the rooms, as Kenny had directed a few hours earlier; the standout, in her mind, was the mermaid suite, with a bed shaped like a giant oyster shell and a jewel-toned ocean motif on the walls. The sounds of ecstasy, abandon, and even confusion emanated from behind the closed doors as she wandered idly down the corridors. 

She did indeed have cause to use the hand signal she’d been taught – a slight bow and a touch of three fingers to the forehead – to indicate polite refusal, with no questions asked. Despite wearing a black mask, she was approached by two separate, seemingly much older women and one unfortunate gentleman who reminded her a bit too much of Mundungus Fletcher. (For all she knew, it _was_ Mundungus Fletcher.) She supposed that in the low light, with vintage bulbs and rotating colored projector lamps, it was likely hard to tell until one got close what color a person’s mask was.

After another glass of champagne, this one with a splash of St. Germain, she noted that one corner of the club was stocked with stripper poles where, seemingly, anyone was encouraged to step up and give it a try; in another corner, men were forming a line in front of a dominatrix offering what looked to be brief samples of whipping. There were, in fact, several more people who felt no compunction to take their activities to a room. One scenario in particular, which she didn’t quite know what to make of, involved three women in matching purple outfits “working on” a man in a kilt, all at the same time. She couldn’t see what they were doing under the kilt, but his screams were quite primal, driving her farther into the comforting din of the music on the other side of the ballroom. She would have loved to hear what Kenny would have said about it.

Of course, to her enormous consternation, Kenny’s last words to her before he left had been correct – the man propped up against the farthest wall _was_ her flavor, damn it all. She’d made the mistake of telling Kenny once about a certain brooding, tortured professor with long dark hair she’d had a crush on when she was younger, and he loved to tease her whenever he thought he found facsimiles of him in the wild. 

This man, from what she could tell at a distance – as she attempted to watch him without being obvious about it – was different from Snape, of course. There would be no other Snape, although she often wondered in the years since the Battle of Hogwarts if he’d faked his death. She couldn’t blame him; she’d all but done the same. 

This man was a bit taller, she could tell, and she was leaning dangerously towards attempting to engage with him. In a moment of uncharacteristic optimism, she took *two* full champagne flutes off a waiter’s tray, thanked him, and tried to move a little closer; at this distance, she couldn’t see the color of his mask ( _just my luck for it to be bloody green,_ she thought). She could, however, see his clothes – a button-up shirt under a taupe vest, pleasantly old-fashioned without screaming for attention – and a prominent nose. His shirt sleeves were rolled up, and he was holding his suit jacket across his lean, muscled forearms, which were folded in front of him. His hair, dangling long in front of his face, came down in dark chocolate waves. As she weaved delicately through the dancing, writhing masses, she could discern a dark beard, thick but neatly trimmed.

 _Fucking bloody hell, Kenny._ She was vexed at him for leaving her to navigate all this alone, and she was even more incensed at him for being right about this man. She was predictable – so much so that the mysterious fellow in the vest would likely not be interested. It wasn’t just the aesthetic, though; it was his enthralling misery, his body language of absolutely *not* wanting to be there, and most importantly the undeniable aura of him having a secret. _That_ was her flavor, and it had damned her many times in the years of short-lived entanglements since Ron. (Sometimes the secret was “I’m married!” or “I’m running drugs for a gang!” or, once, “I don’t believe in kissing until you’re engaged!”) Her rational mind could give her plenty of reasons to turn away and simply spend the rest of the time it took Kenny to finish listening to screeching kilt man.

Hermione couldn’t, though. She inched ever closer, downing the last of her drink, as the rest of the room swayed in time back and forth to some American girl singing about her sadness being taken out of context. There was something – intangible, sweet, but sharp as well – drawing her toward this man. If she hadn’t been in all likelihood drunk by that point, she would have guessed it was magical in nature. She had no idea what she was even going to say; she was terrible at this part. All she could do was walk.

Suddenly, she *could* see the color of his mask, and more – because he’d raised his head in half a second and locked her in his gaze. His eyes, mahogany and rife with accusation, stabbed out into her own through a mask that was, in fact, black.

<> <> <> <> <>

This had all come down to Thorfinn.

Never in twenty thousand aeons would Antonin have come to a place like this on his own. He’d been dragged here practically kicking and screaming by his friend – the _only_ friend he’d kept since they both went into hiding after the third, and hopefully final, “GREAT AZKABAN ESCAPE ADVENTURE” (as Thorfinn called it). 

This pathetic sex club outing was Thorfinn’s latest attempt to “pull Antonin out of his gulag”. Thorfinn said that Antonin kept to himself and his books and his spellcraft too much. Thorfinn said that he was worried about him. 

Thorfinn said that, in some ways, Antonin had never _left_ Azkaban.

However, to Antonin, it was Thorfinn who was worrisome, and reckless. After egregious amounts of pain and mind-numbing recitations of ancient magic, they’d managed to burn the dark marks off their arms, but Antonin still felt it would be all too easy for the wrong person to cross their paths and for them to be identified. And Antonin would NOT go back to that prison a fourth time, elimination of dementors regardless. He would die first. 

The two of them kept out of wizarding London as much as possible (and employed polyjuice or other tricks on the rare occasion an excursion was required – having to get new wands had probably been the most difficult feat), but in muggle London, Thorfinn was a whirling dervish, partying himself half to death – trying to reach Valhalla at the bottom of a glass, or between a plump pair of breasts. He was a dog let off leash, itching to make up for every week he lost in Azkaban, while Antonin was so afraid of going back to it that even he could admit, if only to himself, that he was barely alive.

They’d done what research they could, changed surnames, faked records – muggle resumes were rather boring, but efficient enough – and for the time being they both worked the night shift as security guards at a swanky high-rise where, according to Thorfinn, several muggle celebrities lived (Antonin neither recognized them nor cared). It was a considerable waste of both their talents, but mainly something to keep them busy until they could safely figure out another plan. Neither of them were hurting for money – at Antonin’s paranoid behest, each of them had taken care to sufficiently hide the bulk of their family’s wealth before the battle of Hogwarts – but living ostentatiously attracted attention Antonin couldn’t afford, so he rented a simple fifth-floor, one-bedroom flat. 

Antonin still used magic behind closed doors, or even in front of them. There were ways to subtly use his wand, and there were other ways, ways at which he was fairly proficient, of using wandless magic to make his life easier. (The legilimency was also useful. It wasn’t a skill he had necessarily advertised in his old life – Severus was far better at it, as he was at everything except spellcraft, wards, and pulling women – but it came in handy in his new one, since muggles had no protections against it.)

In fact, Antonin took a quiet, perverse pleasure in subtly utilizing magic against any “problems” he encountered at work. It was after an incident the day before with a crazy, unwashed man stumbling in off the street, trying to insist a supermodel had invited him up to her apartment, that Thorfinn had suggested this daft idea. 

<> <> <> <> <>

“You’re pulled tight as a bowstring, Antoshka,” he said, whistling, after Antonin had dealt with the vagrant with perhaps too much force – stunning him and obliviating him, by slightly moving the wand inside his sleeve. He never did it where the cameras could see, and there was a great deal he could do without the wand altogether.

In the moment, though, he growled, shoving the dazed man out the door. “Don’t call me that. I’ve told you a thousand times not to call me that, you brainless toad.”

Antonin had made the mistake of introducing Thorfinn to his babushka once, and when Thorfinn had heard her term of endearment for him he had chosen *that* detail, out of the innumerable facts and important reminders every day he chose to forget (“Thor, did you eat today?” “Thor, did you pay your rent?” “Thor, where are your pants?”), to remember in perpetuity. If there were gods, Antonin thought, they must be Norse, because someone had to be looking out for Thorfinn in order for him not to have been caught yet.

Thorfinn just laughed. “How long has it been since you’ve been laid, then?”

Antonin shot him the meanest look he could muster.

“That long, comrade? Since Alecto? And that hardly counts, does it?”

Antonin raised an eyebrow and folded his arms. “Is this going somewhere?”

Thor got that cocksure look on his face which usually led to disaster.

“What if I told you I had an easy fix for that?”

<> <> <> <> <>

It _had_ been a while for Dolohov. “A dry spell,” as Yaxley used to call it. (What had happened to Yaxley, their friend? Neither of them had ever heard.)

Antonin knew he needed it, the release Thor was suggesting. He was aware, distantly, that he *had* been even more of an asshole over the last year. He also felt he had earned his cruelty, every jot, with all that he’d seen and all he was working to forget – but he was still a man. Beneath his frigid Siberian reserve, he knew in his heart that he was feral, and he almost feared what he would be like to a woman if given the chance. 

Yes, damnit, he wanted it. Just not like this – not staring at a throng of fleshy, artless bodies, not standing awkwardly against a burgundy wall, not smelling sweat and bleach and, somewhere near him, cranberry juice and vodka spilled across a concrete floor.

Their lives weren’t like this once, he reflected – when they were young, when they were Tom’s chosen vanguard, when they thought they were there for a reason. 

No death eater ever wanted for sex. The wild bacchanalian ragers were half of the appeal for some of their band, he knew, although it wasn’t why he had joined. Tom did take care of all his people – at least in the beginning, when it was a quest, a bond to save the finite resource that was magic. Antonin still wasn’t sure, even now, at what point their endeavor had started to change into a simple, clichéd quest for power, but then it was over – just one fucking baby, really – and they each disbursed and adjusted to their new lives as best they could. With the space in between Tom’s incarnations, they could look back, assess, and realize what they had become. He still remembered that night at the graveyard when they were summoned again, to stare into the face of a reptile, and he knew that – with the exception of Pettigrew and the Lestranges – *none* of the people under those masks wanted to be there anymore. It was what it was.

He wore a very different mask tonight, and, all things he considered, he was lucky to be alive and free. He knew that. He should relish this opportunity, just like Thorfinn was, sidling up to two considerably older, overweight women and saying, “Hey, did you know you are a GMILF? That means “grandmother I’d like to’…”

He could do that, he knew. He could take one of those grandmothers – Thor wouldn’t mind, and would even cheer him on. But Antonin had long since tired of fucking just for fucking’s sake. That mentality had last led him into the bed of Alecto, as Thorfinn had rightly stated, which was an entanglement he’d barely extricated himself from.

But there was nothing here, in this nameless subterranean ballroom, that appealed to Antonin. Perhaps he was being stodgy, or simply holding on to recalcitrant pride and wanting Thor to be wrong, but the club seemed a more fruitful scene for the green maskers, overall. No one had approached him, either, which was his own fault – projecting a thick boundary of “don’t even fucking think about it” as he knew he was. He would stay for a while longer to appease his friend, but all he felt now was more frustrated, more monstrous beneath the surface of his skin, than when he’d entered. 

He’d relegated himself to seething and wasting another couple of hours of his life when, in an instant, he caught a chill. He raised his head just slightly and tried to peruse the room without being obvious about it. It wasn’t an overwhelming feeling – he wasn’t a diviner, Merlin knew – but he was sure, as sure as his own true name, that there was a magical signature in the room which had not been there before. Someone in this writhing, heady space was a wizard, and they were coming closer and closer to him.

Antonin was being hunted.

So, here it was – they’d found him. Quickly, he glanced over to where he’d last seen Thorfinn and surmised he’d escorted his “GMILFs” to a private room. For whatever was about to happen, he was on his own. There was no way for Antonin to get to the exit before this predator, yet unseen beneath a sea of undulating revellers, could reach him. Antonin’s wand was still concealed in an arm brace underneath his shirt sleeve, just like it always was at work; he’d gone through hell to get his new one – fir tree and falcon feather – and, in this moment, was thankful he had resolved to never go anywhere without it. Carefully, without betraying much outward movement, he reached his right hand under the linen fabric of his rolled-up left sleeve and got a firm grip on it.

But was he _really_ feeling magic? Or was he feeling the three vodka shots he’d grumpily ordered from the bartender when they first got there? What self-respecting wizard, other than his idiotic self, would deign to come to a place like this, even to hunt someone as loathsome as Antonin Dolohov? What was the likelihood?

(“No one cares anymore, Anty,” Thor always said. “Trust me, mate, the world has kept turning – no one gives a shit. Tom’s dead, for good this time. We were small fry.”)

 _Was_ he small fry? Was Antonin so focused on being hunted down and recaptured all of the time mainly because of his ego, because of some twisted desire to hold on to former self-importance? Was it more likely that he wasn’t a worthy target anymore, as Thor told him again and again, and that he should accept every implication of that?

He heard now, in his mind, Thor mocking him, calling him paranoid again. _Look at yourself._ Every single muscle in his body was taut. His adrenaline was still responding to an alarm, but he tried to take a deep breath, relaxing his right hand. Would he still be in that dank, freezing prison cell, forever? Was it impossible for him to enjoy anything without seeing dementors and Order members, long dead, skulking around corners? 

He was as big a fool as Thorfinn, he knew – just in a different way.

Still shaken, and annoyed at himself, Antonin had resolved to procure one more vodka shot (for lack of anything else better to do) when he looked up towards the bar and saw that someone, standing only a few feet away, was blocking his view. A woman had breached the “fuck off” shields he’d thought he’d been emanating and, in his self-chastisement, the great Antonin Dolohov – master of wards – had not even noticed.

He stared at her, challenging, half angry she’d caught him off guard and half…fascinated.

Seemingly frozen and unable to break his gaze, like the proverbial deer in the headlights, the woman looked completely different from everyone else there. If not for her intricate lace mask – black, like his, he noticed with a not unpleasant shiver of feeling – and her loose, rich golden brown waves of hair, he would have thought she was there to serve someone divorce papers. She looked professional, classy, elegant. 

He liked that. 

_He wanted to mess it all up._

He shouldn’t have had as many shots, he realized now; the attraction was too quick, too potent. There was something about her that made it impossible to divert his gaze. He wondered where she’d come from, who she was with, why she was here – what his name would sound like screamed from her lips, what her nails would feel like on his back.

 _Idiot,_ he thought. _You were just planning to leave this shithole. Don’t get tangled up in –_

“Your hands are empty,” she said, interrupting his self-chastisement.

Suddenly brazen, she held out a flute of champagne.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have written this work in its entirety and will be proofreading and posting it over the next several days. Also:
> 
> 1\. The song Hermione mentions is Lana Del Rey's "Mariners Apartment Complex."
> 
> 2\. The dystopian novel she references is _Station Eleven_ by Emily St. John Mandel.
> 
> 3\. Thorfinn's "GMILF" comment is a reference to Skwisgar on _Metalocalypse._


	2. "With the Exception of You"

<> <> <> <> <>

Hermione had nothing to lose, really. The worst that would happen was that he would give the “no thank you” hand signal, touching his fingers to his forehead, and she would move on – probably drinking both glasses herself. It’s not like anyone knew her here – or that anyone knew *anyone*. The stakes were low, she told herself.

(Then why was she struggling not to tremble in front of this man, even more enthralling up close, as she held out an offering, a libation, in the face of his commanding silence?)

As the seconds ticked by, she expected the hand signal more and more.

But he never gave it. 

She took two steps toward him then, deliberate, careful, and saw a slight smile creep on to his features as he unfolded his arms and took the champagne from her. He nodded and held up the glass in a gesture of comraderie before bringing it to his lips.

Trying not to audibly sigh with relief, she positioned herself next to him against the wall. She took a sip from her own flute but tensed again when she heard him speak.

“So,” he began, looking out at the crowd. “You thought I was just in _desperate_ need of another drink.” There was something a little stilted about his accent, she noted, in a distant part of her mind, far from the nerves that were rising from being close to him; more specifically, it was the _lack_ of accent, or the attempt at it. She would have bet money that he was endeavoring to cover up his nationality, for whatever reason. 

She would allow him his secrets. It was part of her pattern, anyway.

“It looked that way,” she returned.

“And you thought I was incapable of getting it myself.”

She wasn’t sure about his tone, but decided sass was the best course of action.

“Well, clearly, based on your not having moved an inch from this spot, your strength alone is what’s propping up this entire wall. We’d all be crushed without your noble sacrifice,” she said, gesticulating with her hands towards the entire ballroom. “If you’d gone to get a drink, it would be like Samson pulling down the pillars of the temple.”

“Why do you think I don’t cut my hair?” he whispered.

She giggled as he downed his entire glass, placing it on a nearby table. When he returned to the wall, it felt like he was closer to her – or was that just wishful thinking?

“Of course,” he continued, “in the event of the building’s collapse, nothing of value would be lost, I’m afraid.” He turned his whole body to look at her, and their brown eyes latched on to each other again as he cocked his head to the side and squinted.

“With the exception of you.”

Caught off guard, she wasn’t sure how to respond to that. It would have sounded cheesy from any other bloke, but there was something serious – severe, rather – about this man. 

This was the part of the conversation wherein she’d normally introduce herself, but no names were allowed in this club, Kenny had warned her. She simply blinked, felt herself blushing, and stammered, “I…take it, then, that we have something in common.”

“Oh?” 

“That we were both brought here somewhat begrudgingly.” 

“You’d be correct.” He finally broke eye contact with her, looking out at the bar, and she took in a rapid breath – she knew then that she’d been drowning in him. There was something perilous lurking here, but she couldn’t pull herself out of the water.

“My com…friend, has dragged some poor martyrs off to one of the suites,” he said.

“Ah! My friend has done the same – in the safari room, I believe,” she said, gesturing to the corridors. She finished her own drink and placed her glass next to his on the table.

“How _exotic_. Have you been enjoying the dulcet tones of the man in the kilt?”

She outright chortled at that, not as dignified as she would like, but she was damn well intoxicated at this point and not as able to filter it.

He didn’t seem to mind.

<> <> <> <> <>

They proceeded to stand by the wall together and fall into a tacit, easy rhythm of people-watching for the next half-hour, bonding over their inability to assimilate, occasionally roasting anyone they thought deserved it. He was far more vicious than she, but she cherished his bitterness; it matched a part of herself, a part born since the war, she rarely let off leash. It was a relief, not to have to approve of everything. It was fair to talk about what unfolded around them, since they couldn’t talk about themselves.

She sensed him moving progressively closer to her, and there were several times during their banter that it seemed like he was going to touch her (her hand, her shoulder, a piece of her hair which she’d hopefully allowed to hang out of place), and she was ashamed to admit she ached for it. Every time, though, he would look away and readjust his sleeve, run his fingers through his hair, or point out another clubgoer – someone in a full-on wolf costume with a moveable jaw, for instance, or one gentleman with the build of a rugby player, fully naked except for a Josephine Baker banana skirt. 

“A courageous choice,” she said. 

“Considering it yourself? I like your current ensemble, but wouldn’t complain.”

“You like it, suddenly? I thought you said I looked like a barrister.”

“Who said I disliked barristers?” He looked her up and down, lingering longer than customary. “It just seems to be an overabundance of fabric for this venue.”

“Says the man who came in a _three piece suit_.”

“I’m not opposed to having it removed – ”

At that point, the kilt man’s ecstasy reached such a fever pitch that it cascaded across the entire ballroom, and whatever else he would have said was lost as he pinched the bridge of his nose and she covered her mouth, trying not to guffaw.

Second guessing herself, as always, she tried to enjoy the interactions without prediction or expectation. She relished the sound of his deep voice, whether it was hiding something or not, and she missed being able to joke around like this – not giving a damn about offending anyone, because, really, after tonight, she’d never see this man again.

(Why did that strike a mournful note inside her calloused heart?)

After a dozen songs had come and gone, she took a steadying breath and leaned against him, touching her shoulder to his arm – realizing that he might have been, out of a rare sense of politeness, waiting for her to make the first move. She felt a little jolt, but told herself it was a static shock; the nights were getting colder.

“Ouch! You hurt me, woman. I might sue,” he barked, with a wry smile. He bumped her with his elbow, gently, but she was moving away from him already, with a mission.

“I’ll make it up to you then,” she said, a little shaken, not exactly knowing why. She swept by the table and picked up the two empty glasses, taking a few steps toward the bar. She turned her face back to the mystery man, flipping her tresses up to the side in what she hoped was an attractive performance. (Her hair, once her enemy, had – with considerable effort – become one of her assets.) “What would you like this time?”

“What I’d like is not at the bar,” she could have sworn he mumbled, his eyes to the far wall.

“What was that, Samson?”

He looked up and, deliberating, shook his head. “I should probably stop, in truth.”

“Are you driving?”

“No, but…” he said, reaching out in one smooth movement – so smooth she didn’t realize it was happening until she could see the fine hairs of his beard – to grab her wrist and pull her towards his chest. His arms snaked around her back, and his face leaned down towards her as he growled, “I would prefer that you stay with me.”

For a few seconds she lost the music; it was somewhere underneath the rhythm of the blood pumping in her ears. She didn’t move; she didn’t even blink. 

Those eight words had gone straight to her knickers. 

(Was this it? Would she end up in the mermaid suite after all, with this complete stranger who called to her in ways she didn’t fully understand?)

“Anyway,” he said, just above a whisper, “I’ve already had four drinks.” He was still holding her, locking his arms in place behind her back now, bringing her closer. She could smell his scent now – something like oak, and leather, and…eucalyptus.

She shrugged. He’d gone this far – she could go a baby step farther.

She lifted her hands, with methodical slowness, up to both sides of his collar and grasped them. She stared right at him and smiled as she breathed, from memory, “The eye that looks ahead to the safe course is closed forever.” 

He was intelligent enough to know, surely, that she wasn’t just talking about the drinks.

He smiled, menacingly, and something in her twisted. “I can’t argue with Frank Herbert.”

Oh, dear Merlin – and _he read books._

It was all she could do not to snog him right there. 

Instead, trying to avoid seeming desperate, she backed away from him, tracing her fingers down his shoulders and arms as she went. “Another champagne?”

“If you MUST leave me here to endure this cesspool by myself,” he drawled, folding his arms again and rolling his eyes, “I would be grateful for a shot of Stolichnaya.”

“And you shall have it,” she returned, before making her way through the crowds again, swaying the hell out of her hips in her best impression of Jessica Rabbit.

“Don’t take too long,” she heard him yell. “I might get enchanted by the banana man!”

She would hate to admit it to Kenny tomorrow that she was, in fact, having a stellar time.

<> <> <> <> <>

Antonin was fucked.

He’d had a nice little plan to leave, to walk the short few blocks home to his books and his fireplace and his comfortable bed with too many pillows for any normal heterosexual man, and then her stiletto heels had click-click-clicked their way into his fortress of solitude.

He _liked_ this girl, damnit. He liked this girl _far too much_ for only having met her an hour ago and not even knowing her name. (He could hear, already, Thorfinn laughing at him, gloating all the way to the moon about what a brilliant idea this had been.) 

It was a fucking cliche and he knew it, but she felt like a magnet. He simply wanted to be near her – it seemed like a strain *not* to be. He’d battled with himself at first, not wanting to come on too strong and frighten her away, but once she’d leaned in and shocked him with her touch, he wished for more – he _needed more._

Antonin made no effort to deny at this point that he wanted to fuck her into next week. He wanted to ruin her for any other man. 

He wanted, most of all, to get her the hell out of this ridiculous place. She was too good for it – she was too good for _him._

But his desire outpaced his conscience any day. That was how he’d ended up in this life.

How impossibly drunk *was* he, to be acting like this? He knew, in his own head, sadly watching her graceful form recede from him as she journeyed back to the bar, how crazy he might appear. He couldn’t remember feeling this way about _any_ woman so quickly. (Had the shots been laced with something, he wondered, absently?) He was adept at the flirtation game, usually, or he had been before Azkaban – but he felt like a novice now, little better than a fifteen year-old, barely keeping his libido in check.

Of course, as to their *actual* relative ages, he was clueless. He knew she was younger than him, but was afraid to learn by how much. She had to be at least twenty-one to enter, he remembered with immense relief, but what he could see of her face still nagged at him – what _was_ it about her that was familiar? Did he know her from somewhere? 

Did she live in the apartment complex where he worked? 

Had she been a death eater? 

No, surely not. She wouldn’t be *here*, and he would have remembered someone like her in their ranks. Bella was the only one who was even close to this girl’s build, and this girl was not barmy Bella – who’d been long since vaporized by _Molly Fucking Weasley_ of all people. (He’d never understood how that had happened, but then again Thorfinn had never understood how “that godforsaken furby” Flitwick had disarmed and arrested Antonin. He guessed it was the same reason: their hearts just hadn’t been in it anymore.)

Even though he was almost completely sure this girl was *not* someone from his past or present life, he reminded himself that he should be careful. He still wasn’t sure that he _hadn’t_ felt someone’s magic roaming around earlier, and a rational part of his brain – far removed from the _id_ which was currently in the driver’s seat – knew that he had no business getting mixed up with anyone sexually. He didn’t think he *deserved* pussy, for one, but more importantly, with any woman, there would be too much he had to hide. Even now, with this little minx who had immediately tossed a molotov cocktail into his carefully-constructed, logical self-isolation, he was still eliminating his Russian accent as best he could – something he did with everyone but Thorfinn, in this new strange existence wherein he went by “Anthony”. Everything practical pointed to a liason with her being a terrible idea, but when she stood next to him on the wall, laughing at his jokes and smelling of raspberries, pragmatism and prudence had utterly lost their appeal.

Growing antsy in her absence, he stood on his tiptoes, trying to find her in the crowd near the bar, and was just barely too horny to be embarrassed about it. 

After an annoyed minute, his eyes found her by her crisp white shirt – could see her now, sitting on a stool with her legs crossed, waiting for the alcohol. Her milky white calves stood out in the low, multicolored lighting, begging to be touched. 

The drinks were taking a while – taking too long, in fact.

 _Cyka blyat_ , why did he care? He was Antonin fucking Dolohov – he had lost count of how many people he’d killed, how many spells he’d created, and how many women he’d fucked into oblivion, for that matter. Why was this one so integral?

 _And why in the FUCK,_ he asked himself, suddenly incensed beyond all mortal reason, _is some ginger asshole over there trying to grab her?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. A general note on the Russian language snippets from Antonin in this story: I collected all Russian phrases, with the exception of two that happen later on, from the two websites that I will paste below. If any of these are wrong or used incorrectly, I **sincerely** apologize to any Russian-speaking readers for my ignorance.
> 
> https://learnrussian.rt.com/speak-russian/tender-words-russian#:~:text=Here%20are%20some%20of%20the,zolotse%E2%80%9D%20(my%20gold).
> 
> https://www.thetraveltart.com/russian-swear-words-slang-expletives/
> 
> 2\. ...who you think that ginger be? :-)
> 
> 3\. The Frank Herbert novel Hermione quotes is _Dune._


	3. "Someone You Need to Leave Alone"

<> <> <> <> <>

Reaching out to take the two vodka shots she’d ordered, Hermione was floating on a high of booze and being wanted – for once, by someone *she* wanted just as much, if not more – when something utterly horrifying crashed through her euphoria. 

“Mione?”

She froze. She would never forget that voice.

_“Mione, not tonight – I’m watching quidditch.”_

_“I’m just going to go hang with Nigel. What anniversary?”_

_“Dishes not done, then?”_

Still holding the two shots, stuck in her own head, she couldn’t bear to turn around.

_“Come on, Mione, let me see your notes! Just one more time.”_

_“He’s using you…they get scary when they get older.”_

_“Honestly she’s a nightmare! No wonder she’s not got any friends!”_

He couldn’t be here. There was no way. Not after the many seasons of distancing herself from any shred of her old existence, not on the first night in years that she was having pure, unadulterated fun, not when she’d found someone who pulled her into his lean, strong arms the way the man on the wall had done, his need raw and undisguised. 

Not here, not now. Not –

“Hermione???”

She downed her shot. She’d need it for this.

Still grasping her stranger’s Stolichnaya, she felt herself be yanked around 180 degrees to face her ex. It wasn’t a hallucination – he was really there. No mask could obscure him.

_Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world…_

He’d cut and styled his hair (it looked nice, actually, a distant part of her vaguely noted), but it was still the same shade of carrot. He was in a basic white v-neck, and he looked like he’d bulked up some since the week he’d ejected her from their apartment and left on a vacation, not even so much as helping her pack one box. 

“Blimey, what are you _doing_ here?” he shouted, his fingers digging into her shoulders, his breath smelling like stout and cigarettes. “I thought you were in…Wisconsin!!!”

So that’s what Harry had told him. (She wondered how he’d come up with *that* one.) 

“You bloody disappeared, Mione! What the fuck!”

 _Just as you asked me to,_ she thought, bewildered.

Ron still stared at her, half shocked and half livid, through a mask that was…green.

_Well, that’s interesting._

Ron *had* been a part of her disastrous pattern. His secret was right in front of her.

“Mione…talk to me! You dropped off the face of the planet.” He hadn’t let go.

But she had no desire to go through this. Not now, not ever. She'd come too far.

“Excuse me,” she returned, somewhat foolishly going for a Yorkshire accent on the spur of the moment. “Tha’s not my name. Am off t’ give a man his drink.”

 _“If you feel the need to lie,”_ she remembered Kenny telling her once, _“just stay on the lie, no matter what. Never admit it. Ride that lie all the way into the goddamn sunset.”_

Ron’s head snapped back, as if he’d been slapped, but he didn’t let go.

“That mane of hair,” he said, sapped of his ire. “You just – you look like someone I – ”

Before he could finish his comparison, Hermione felt herself being pulled back from Ron in one decisive tug, a strong arm wrapped around her midsection and another arm reaching around to grab the shot from her hand. She looked up in time to see – thank Godric, what exquisite timing! – her Samson, her dark-haired avenger, her “flavor” with no name, downing his vodka and staring at Ron with a piercing, disgusted expression, not unlike something she’d seen from Lucius Malfoy. He slammed his glass down on the bar and held her tightly to his own body, never breaking eye contact with her ex. 

“…someone you need to leave alone,” the stranger finished for him.

She decided at that precise moment that she’d be fucking this man. 

She would find a way or make one.

Ron, sufficiently alpha’d, took a few steps backward and rejoined the crowd of friends – boyfriends? – he’d come in with. She shuddered as her savior touched his lips to her ear.

“Come dance with me.” 

Still held tight in his embrace, she looked up to meet his masked eyes through the curtain of dark brown hair. Her adrenaline was still out in full force from the near-catastrophe with her ex, but somehow, with this total stranger, she felt…secure. 

She smiled with egregious innocence. “Why? I thought you hated it here.”

He squeezed her even tighter, then wiggled his eyebrows. “Now that I finally have you, I need an excuse to hold you a little longer.”

He was already guiding her to the dance floor, and she could just make out the music (“You’re my satellite / You’re riding with me tonight”) as he spun her around to face him. 

“Are you alright?” he asked, quietly, interlacing his long fingers with her own as they swayed together. She inhaled his scent again, thick as a drug, and looked up at him, considering. She could tell him anything or everything – but she didn’t want to waste another moment on Ron when she’d already wasted so many years.

“Better now,” she said. “Thank you.” She stood on her tiptoes between beats of the song and kissed him, slowly, on the cheek, right above his beard. It wasn’t enough.

He looked down at her and twirled her around, pulling her back into his embrace with an extravagant dip that the song didn’t really call for, but which sent a thrill down her spine. 

“I told you,” he said, his warm breath ghosting over the top of her breasts as he pulled her back up to him. “Nothing of value would be lost here.”

He gradually maneuvered them back to what she thought of as “their” wall. She let him. She was high on this man, the feel of his linen shirt, his hand on her back, the way her white lace panties grew wet just from the vibrations of his voice in her ears. 

“But I don’t blame him for being drawn in by this sublime hair, I suppose,” he said, running his fingers through her tresses. Somehow she was up against the wall now, trapped by him, right where she wanted to be. She locked eyes with him as a chill wracked her body. In a second, he had a handful of her locks and was grasping it tightly, pulling back her head and exposing her neck to him. It was all she could do not to moan.

“I want to see it on my pillowcase,” he said, shameless, pressing himself against her. 

She felt his need as she lifted one leg and wrapped it around him, tight as a tourniquet. Even behind the mask, she could see his eyes grow larger, and she heard his breath catch as she said, “Bold of you to assume we’d make it to the bedroom.”

<> <> <> <> <>

At those words, Antonin savaged her. 

He couldn’t have stopped himself even if he wanted to.

Her neck, still bared to him, was assaulted with kisses and bites as he reached down for her other leg and roughly pulled both of them up higher around him, shoving her more forcefully into the wall. He didn’t care that other people were watching; he didn’t care about how much Thorfinn would take the piss out of him later; he didn’t care that he was hard as a rock and there was no way she wouldn’t know it; he didn’t care that he was a fugitive, for one blessed moment. All he cared about, as she whimpered and drove him further into frenzy, was getting inside this woman as soon as possible.

Her fingernails were on his scalp when she breathed, “There’s a room – ”

“No,” he cut her off, kissing his way up her jawline, painfully conscious of the fact that he hadn’t snogged her properly yet. “Not here.” Some neanderthal part of him wanted to drag her back to his own territory and claim her there, but he also wanted to take off her mask, and his own – for them to see each other in full.

“Let me take you home. I’m not far, just three blocks.”

Still holding her against the wall, he stopped kissing her earlobe and pulled back to see her reaction – he knew some women would not be on board with this, and he wouldn’t really blame them, rationally. She was still panting, still grasping his hair, and he couldn’t tell if her half-open eyes were due to skepticism or sensory overload.

“Text your friend, if you like, to let him know – and give me a word.”

She blinked, still breathing hard, and nodded quickly. He let her back down, promptly missing the blissful feel of her sitting on his cock, separated only by three layers of fabric. She shimmied her skirt back down a few inches and removed a phone from her brastrap – he hadn’t even known anything was down there – and he ran his fingers lightly up her neck as she pressed a series of buttons with impressive rapidity.

“What did you mean, ‘a word’?” she asked, still texting, but leaning closer to him.

Antonin traced one finger down past her collarbone, popping one shirt button open and stopping in the valley between her breasts. She gasped and stared up at him, almost dropping the phone, and he’d felt it too – a little lightning bolt that ran straight from his finger to his groin. Suddenly his senses were heightened – the raspberry smell from her skin, her shampooed hair, the soft, secret skin under his fingertip, the rosy pout of her untouched lips, the song languoriously sliding from the speakers (“What a wicked thing to do, to make me dream of you”). He had no idea what was happening anymore.

He had to take a few breaths, to master himself, to answer her question.

“I can be somewhat…untrammeled,” he whispered, a little shakier than he’d intended, grasping the next button without quite undoing it. “And you are bringing out the worst in me. Give me something to make you feel safe – a word you can say that will make me stop.” To underscore his point, he pulled back his hand and held it aloft in the air.

She nodded, understanding, almost looking…eager? Ready for whatever he was about to throw at her? Or was that too much optimism on his part?

She reached out and took his lifted hand in hers, carefully, unexpectedly tender. It threw him off balance as much as everything else about her had.

“How about ‘Stolichnaya’?”

He made a scoffing noise, squeezing and then letting go of her hand so that he could put on his coat, one sleeve at a time. “Why? I thought you’d pick ‘Muad’Dib’.”

She giggled in return, nuzzling her face into the crook of his neck. “With four syllables, it takes effort and intention – not something I could ever say accidentally.” She looked up at him again with an impish grin as she stuffed her phone back under her bra strap. “Although, unless you try to surprise me with anal, I doubt I’ll be saying it at all.”

He guffawed (a few people turned to stare), and replied, “Duly noted,” before scooping her up bridal style. She grasped the back of his neck and let out an “oop!” of delighted surprise as Antonin Dolohov stomped out of the nameless club, without looking back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The songs Hermione and Antonin hear playing in the club are "Satellite" by Guster and "Wicked Game" by Chris Isaak.
> 
> 2\. The smut really begins in the following chapters. Don't say I didn't warn you.


	4. "Brave Little Gryffindor Bitch"

<> <> <> <> <>

She was right. They didn’t make it to the bedroom. 

He hadn’t even made it to his own threshold.

In the elevator up to his apartment, as soon as the doors closed, he swept down on her like a pteradactyl, spreading his arms, encompassing her face in his hands, and eviscerating her gorgeous lips. _Fucking finally,_ he thought, savoring the the first kiss he’d had in *years* – the taste of vodka and mint and pure, unadulterated desire. Somehow, it was better, much better, than he remembered, and he couldn’t restrain himself from pushing her into the wallpaper and snogging the living daylights out of her. She moaned into his mouth as their tongues vied for dominance, and he felt the exhilaration of her deft fingers unbuttoning his shirt and tangling in his chest hairs, her nails grazing his nipples. By the time the elevator doors had opened again, his own fingers had already been reaching up her skirt and just barely had time to feel her panties, soaked through already.

“You little slut,” he whispered, smiling, and as she emitted a high-pitched noise of both ecstasy and objection, he lifted her lithe body over one shoulder, like a caveman, and made his way to his apartment. For once, he found the right key in his pocket right off the bat and kicked the door open wide as she laughed, her stilettos falling to the floor.

He realized with a miniscule punch to the gut that he was holding this stranger like something he never wanted to let go of – like something that belonged to him and him alone.

Cutting short his melancholy musings, she was on him again as soon as he’d put her down in the kitchen and she’d unceremoniously chucked her phone on the shelf by the door, scratching his neck, ripping the coat and vest off his shoulders, biting and sucking his lower lip; he’d barely had a second to lock the door behind them. This girl (this woman, _his_ woman, at least for tonight) was every bit as feral as he was. She might be the death of him and he didn’t even care; if this was how he went out, so be it.

“More,” she squealed.

Antonin grabbed her with one arm and used his other arm, in one giant swipe, to send everything on the kitchen table flying into the air and on the floor ( _not important!_ ). He was relieved in this moment that he hadn’t taken Thorfinn’s suggestion to get a pet – there was nothing to interrupt them now. He placed her on the table facing him, leaned down to kiss her again – more thoughtful this time, a little less violent – and hitched up her pinstripe skirt, pulling what turned out to be a pair of white lace knickers down her legs. She shimmied out of them, adorably – he noted in some small, soft, nearly-destroyed part of himself – and he threw them carelessly into the living room.

Their masks were still on, but he could address that later – first, her pleasure. He wanted to see what his sophisticated little girl sounded like when she lost control.

He returned his fingers to her folds – no more barriers now. He bit his lip as he explored her; at this point, he truly couldn’t remember how long it had been, and it felt as close to heaven as a derelict like him could imagine. He watched her reactions, listened to her exhalations, observed her wriggling on his table and knew his morning porridge and fried eggs would never be the same. 

“Ahhh…ahhhhh…oh sweet…fuck, thank you, thank you, you have no idea how…AHHHHHH!” she caterwauled. Her rapture was operatic to him – neighbors be damned. He grinned like the devil himself and leaned down, fingers still doing their wicked work, to leave a mark on her neck. _Mine,_ he thought. He’d make damn sure she was covered in those by the time she left this fucking apartment – if he ever let her go.

“Bloody hell, Samson, who gave you perMISSion to be so FUCKing ADEPT at this – ”

“ _Such_ a good girl,” he growled, pushing in harder. “You’re so wet for me, _krasavitsa._ ”

 _Shit._ As his fingers were diving deeper and deeper inside her, he was losing himself, his cautious vigilance. Before he could panic at the microscopic shard of his identity he’d left uncovered, she reached up and deathgripped his forearms with her fingers.

“Take off your fucking pants if you want to see a _good girl._ ”

Antonin could not remember a time in his entire life that he’d divested himself of his trousers, shoes, socks, and underwear with such alacrity. 

All that was left was his shirt, hanging loosely on his frame, and his mask, which he would have removed then – except that he couldn’t resist tangling his hands in her lovely hair as she took his painfully erect cock into her beautiful mouth. 

He hissed then – he couldn’t stop it – because _fuck_ , she knew what he was doing. He didn’t know if he wanted to just savor the singular masterpiece that was this blow job, or to track down every other, lesser man who’d gotten to experience this oral euphoria and murder him in cold blood. She acted like she _enjoyed_ it. Never breaking eye contact, she teased his tip with her tongue, sucked him hard, and used her glorious hands – one to twist on the shaft and another, to his gleeful surprise, to massage his balls.

“FUCK you fucking FUCK, damnit, _Christ pantocrator,_ help me, you – ”

He was loving every second of this, but it had been too long. He wanted, NEEDED to impale this woman, and he wasn’t sure how long he would last with her sucking him like this, having to look at her, sin on a crumpet, bobbing up and down gently on her knees, her pert breasts peeking and bouncing over the top of her shirt – fucking deep throating him now, _shit fuck balls cunt blyat zaebis zhopa shluha vokzal’naja –_

Suddenly he wrenched her off his dick and lifted her up, placing her back on the table in front of him, then unzipped her skirt and yanked it down to the floor. 

“I need you,” he said, utterly without self-consciousness, leaning down to kiss her lips again. He couldn’t get enough even of that – no one night would be enough, he knew. 

“Please,” was all she whispered, cupping his face in her hands, panting.

It was all he needed to hear.

Antonin stood straight, lined himself up with her entrance, and, before moving, took in the resplendent sight of the sumptuously disheveled creature below him. 

In another universe, in another country, on another night, with another girl, Antonin could have gone slow. He could have been gentle, inch by inch. Lenient.

But not tonight. Not with this little slut on the table – _his_ little slut on the table. He knew what she could take, and he knew, after years in a cold, grey cell, what he needed.

Antonin sheathed himself all the way inside her in one slick, brutal thrust.

Her gasp was a symphony. The arch of her back, the way she dug her fingernails into the wood, her eyes rolling into the back of her head – he would never forget it as long as he lived. They both cried out together, almost in harmony; she felt _too good_ , too tight for comprehension. Antonin could tell when he’d played with her that she would be a marvel, but he had no idea it would be like this, this more-than-perfect compression. He was enveloped, engulfed, wedged right where he needed to be. She felt like home. 

_Damnit, don’t think that shit. Get it together. Just because it’s been so long doesn’t mean –_

Staring up at the ceiling in shock, she made some kind of ragged, wild exhalation that enflamed him, then reached up to touch his chest with both hands as he, unable to wait a second longer, started to move. He’d given her a few seconds to adjust; he wasn’t a monster (or at least not anymore), and now he began to establish a gradual rhythm, trying to ensure he didn’t explode too quickly and end the evening in embarrassment and disappointment. He was closer than he wanted to admit, having to martial himself in every moment – how could he not be, as dazzling as his prize was, her golden brown locks like a lion’s mane spread out across his breakfast table, her impeccable tits heaving with each plunge, her pink flush creeping down from under her black lace mask? 

Maybe it was, after all, simply the long abstinence, but this little siren was ratcheting him up more than he could ever remember feeling in his youth, even in the zenith of a death eater orgy. Antonin half wondered if this was actually happening, or if he would wake up any second now. She was just too good – too insanely good. He relished every stroke, the feel of her delicate fingers and the embrace of her womb, wet and welcoming – and the almost primitive look in her eyes when he reached down with one hand to play with her clit.

“Fuuuuuuuuu _uuuuuck!!!_ Yes, yes, YES, you snarky rotten bastard – ”

“You like that…my good girl?” he whispered huskily in between the smacking sounds of his dick slamming into her. “You want to come for me? Is that…why you picked me out of the crowd…and brought me a drink – you knew I could…make you fall apart like this?”

“Yes, yes I bloody knew, you KNOW I knew, God, fuck, I knew you could – AHHHHHH!”

Her screams, fierce, almost barbaric, spurred him on – panting, locking eyes through their masks, almost in a trance, he was possessed to move faster, fuck harder, reputation be damned. He was chasing it now, her fingernails scratching down to his obliques, and as he drove into her, pushing her splendid legs up over his shoulders, his other hand was drawn irresistably to the space between her breasts that he’d touched when they were in the club, the touch that had done something to him he didn’t understand. He tore her pristine collared shirt open in one ferocious rip, buttons clattering to the hardwood floor. Looking down at her ruined clothing, even while he wrecked her, she uttered a high-pitched birdlike cheep of protest that would have made him laugh under other circumstances.

“I’ll buy you a new one. I’ll take care of you, _dorogaya._ Just come for me,” he breathed, not even noticing what he’d said, still fucking, still rubbing, feeling her squeeze him harder as she got closer and closer – but he felt something else, distinct and intoxicating, as his hand was pulled inexorably to her newly-exposed torso, applying pressure and dragging his fingers slowly down to her belly button and the top of her pubic hair. Something about the feel of that skin was shooting through Antonin as he closed his eyes, setting him on fire – and it was only as she was coming, shouting her release to the rafters, her pretty legs quaking on his shoulders, that he realized it was magic.

It was at that precise instant, far too late, that he finally looked down and saw it. 

His wonderful mystery girl, breathless and insensate from orgasm, had a long, winding purple scar that ran all the way up from her groin to the middle of her breasts.

_…fuck._

Antonin froze. The full, deadly realization of his catastrophic mistake hit him like an anvil. He’d kept thinking this was too good. It had been, all along – too good to be true.

_I guess I deserve this._

_But I never expected that the one to hunt me down and find me would be *her.*_

He would NOT, however, go back to Azkaban – not even for a pussy this magnificent.

In a millisecond, he’d dropped her legs, leaned forward, ripped off her mask, and pulled his wand out of his sleeve, pressing the tip to her lovely white throat. 

<> <> <> <> <>

It had been, unquestionably, the best dicking of Hermione’s life – and he hadn’t even finished yet. 

This masked hero, this lone fucking ranger, had given her everything she never thought she’d get in a manner of minutes – manhandling her halfway to annihilation and making her scream like a backalley whore. She didn’t even have the emotional capacity left over for shame – all of it was soaked up by this enigmatic demigod and his kitchen table.

He was fucking _big_ – that much that was indisputable, and she’d been slightly afraid as she was tasting him that he wouldn’t fit inside her – but it wasn’t just his size. It was just as much his raw intention, his genuine desire for *her* to reach her apex before him, and the depraved grin on his face as he helped her get there with each devastating thrust. He had ultimately sent her over the edge with an unexpected, thorough, almost loving touch to an ugly part of herself she always endeavored to keep hidden, at least since Ron. His ministrations to her scar sent a lightning bolt through her that she lacked the capacity to explain, but he’d made her feel seen, and acknowledged – and beautiful.

Which is why she was so confused when, in the midst of her dizzy post-orgasmic nirvana, she felt him rudely yank off her lace mask and press something into her neck. 

She opened her eyes, dazed, not processing what was happening – at first, she simply sighed at the contentment of him still being inside her, thicker than he had any right to be. All she saw was her benefactor, handsome as hell, chest and abs peeking through an open, wrinkled shirt, dangling thick hair a brown so dark it was almost black, and his gorgeous face fully revealed to her as he removed his own mask with his other hand – the sharp angles of his cheekbones, the haunting rage in his deep, barrel-brown eyes.

Rage, she computed. 

Why rage? What was he pressing into her neck?

Why did it look like a wand?

“Happy to have captured your quarry, little witch?”

She blinked. His accent – he was no longer hiding it. 

“You almost pulled off a nice little honey trap here. I’m sure a brave little Gryffindor bitch like you was happy to volunteer to take me down, Granger.”

Russian. His accent was _Russian._

In a remote part of her brain that *wasn’t* experiencing the orgasm of a lifetime, there was the tiniest sliver of recognition – but it wasn’t connecting to the rest of her yet.

“…how…do you know my name?” She squinted, not even endeavoring to move. 

He laughed, but bitterly, with none of his previous amusement. He pointed to her scar with his free hand, taking care, she noticed, not to touch it. “I only used that curse one time on a woman. And _that woman_ was the only person who ever survived it.”

Her eyes went large. In an overwhelming wave of memory, she saw a purple flash coming towards her, unstoppable, in the Department of Mysteries – saw those same cheekbones, that same hair, but shorter then, and and that same nose from a distance from across a cafe as the two of them lobbed spells back and forth at one another. 

She remembered, in one of the the last _Daily Prophet_ pictures she’d ever bothered to look at, his countenance in his animated mugshot – derisive, but resigned to his fate – in an article announcing that he had once again escaped from Azkaban.

“…Dolohov!!!”

“Don’t act surprised you little _sooka_ , ratting me out to your aurors!!!” he yelled, pressing he wand in harder. “ _Chyort!_ How much time do I have before they all come and break down the door? How did you know I would be at that club tonight?”

She cocked her head to the side. Too high on their previous elation to fully appreciate how easy it would be for him to _adava kedavra_ her in two seconds, she couldn’t help but laugh. He squinted as she sat up on her elbows, tensing, moving the wand with her.

“You think all this,” she said, gesturing to their still-joined privates, “was some kind of sting operation? That I’m selling my body in order to drag you back to prison?”

“ _Perestan’ bit dabayobom_ – how am I NOT supposed to think it was? You know I felt you tonight, coming towards me in the ballroom – that’s what kills me. I felt your magic. I was prepared for an attack. I just wasn’t prepared for…this _wed’ma_ in high heels.”

“Dolohov,” she deadpanned, her mouth forming a hard line. “You barmy dolt. I have _left_ wizarding England, utterly. I work for a muggle newspaper – I changed my name. I only have _one_ person from the old days who I even speak to. I don’t even carry my wand on me when I leave the house.” She smiled, still a little groggy. “You can search me.”

 _“Zacroy svoy peesavati rot, sooka!_ Stop trying to seduce me again!” He was shaking a little – she could feel it inside her – and looking nervously around the apartment, probably coming up with some kind of exit plan on the fly. But she didn’t want him to use it.

“Dolohov, trust me: I am not here to hurt you. I want NOTHING to do with my past life. My friend dragged me to that club because I wasn’t _having_ much of a life.”

Something unreadable danced across his features – almost recognition, or empathy. She sighed again and wrapped her legs around his back, pulling them closer.

“Stop that!” he barked, his wand arm twitching. Impressively, he was still hard.

“Use legilimency, Dolohov. I don’t fucking care. I never envisioned this scenario in a thousand years, so I certainly didn’t _engineer_ it.” 

He lifted his head in some kind of challenge. She hadn’t even known for certain if Dolohov *was* a _legilimens_ , but, sure enough, she soon heard him whisper the spell and felt him probing her mind, sifting through it carefully, methodically, like a dewey decimal filing cabinet. She could sense that he saw Kenny, saw her going through the motions every day at work, saw her complete lack of interaction with any aurors, order members, or denizens of the wizarding universe at all. 

After a minute, she suddenly felt him watching, with interest and arousal he did not conceal, her experience of their earlier frenzied coupling – which made something inside her twinge. Still drunk on him, and squashing every rational part of her conscience, she squeezed him with her walls, pressing the heels of her feet into the small of his back.

“Damnit wench I said stop that!” he hissed, vaulting out of her mind, grabbing her tits with both hands to shove her back down. His wand rolled onto the floor with a clatter. _“Ne pudri mne mozgi._ I need to obliviate the fuck out of you and get you out of here…”

“Mmmmm,” she wondered, squeezing him again, without mercy. 

_“FUCK!”_ he shouted, roaring like a bear. But he made no effort to extricate himself.

Later, she would wonder at her absolutely insane reaction to all of this – why wasn’t she trying to grab the wand and run? – but in that instant all she desired was _more._

“Don’t you want to come inside me first?” she whispered. “Teach me a lesson?”

He moaned, with not a shred of restraint, and the fact that she had even one ounce of power over this man, once an enemy, turned her on again at full speed. She wriggled and laid her hands over his, guiding one back down her purple scar, shuddering. 

(The next day, sitting in front of the fireplace, she would realize how much her judgment – and likely his – had been clouded by not only the alcohol but, more prominently, the strong unknown magic that was flowing back and forth between them.)

“Do you feel that, too, or is it just on my end?” She was electrified every time he made contact with her wound, like each nerve in her body was tingling, glowing, dancing.

For a few seconds, the death eater’s eyes were closed, and he said nothing. He was simply panting, squeezing the one breast, hard – occasionally tweaking the nipple – and massaging the long purple line with the other, probing the path of his evil.

“…I feel it, _dorogaya,_ ” he finally returned, in a defeated, husky voice.

“Is it,” she asked, reaching her hand around to cup his balls, “a part of the curse?” A planner even in the midst of her lustful madness, she wanted to keep him ready. 

“I don’t know,” he whispered, lowering his face closer to hers. “You were the only one I cast that version of it on, the wordless spell. It was a…less lethal, non-verbal variant I’d prepared in case I ever needed it, and then you came along and silenced me, you uppity chit…AH!” he yelped, reacting to her careful massaging. “Fuck, that – that feels good.”

She grinned in triumph, pushing him farther inside her with her legs again.

“ _Shit._ I can still kill you wandlessly, you little minx, so don’t try anything.”

“You’ve seen everything you need to see in my mind – you still don’t believe me?”

He looked down at her with a brief expression she hadn’t yet seen – sorrow – and she considered what his life on the run must have been like. She wondered if he had anyone to talk to, if he’d had anyone to confide in, if he’d had anyone to touch, or if every minute had simply been looking over his shoulder in constant panic and paranoia.

She reached up with both hands and cupped his beautiful, haunted face again. She had never taken the dark mark (which she noticed now was absent from his arm, replaced by some angry scar tissue) and had never sworn allegiance to a dark lord, but for some psychotic reason she felt a kinship with this man. She had some scar tissue on her arm too – it was the best the cosmetic surgeons at St. Mungo’s could to do eliminate the handiwork of Bellatrix – but, more than that, she, like him, was also on the run from her former reality. She had no idea why he’d been a soldier of Voldemort, but in this heady moment all she knew was that the war had wounded them both, and they’d each been towed into into that club by other people who wanted them to, if only for one night, experience some kind of raw human spark. She’d found it – in the most unexpected place – and in that instant, all she could prioritize was holding on to it.

“I love the sound of your true voice.”

He looked…taken aback, but he didn’t pull away. She wasn’t sure why she’d said it, of all the things she could have said to him then, but she kept going.

“I know why you hid it, but you don’t have to hide it anymore.”

He breathed in and out, slowly, steadily, and it seemed like he was finally starting to realize that Kingsley Shacklebolt wasn’t about to jump out of his pantry. 

“I want to hear you as you are,” she said, trailing her hands down his neck and chest.

“I want to hear you scream my _name_ , you fearless little bitch,” he growled, seemingly unable to hold himself back any longer, removing his hand from her breast and replacing it with his hungry mouth, licking and sucking with delicious intensity.

She laughed, then mewed, arching up to meet him, tangling her hands in his hair.

“Antonin?” she tried, hesitantly, unsure of the right – “Ah!” she breathed. He’d thrusted deeper inside her again, just once, reminding her she was still impaled on him.

“ _Antonin,_ ” he corrected her, gently. There was just the slightest “y” sound before the “in,” she noted. She tried again. If she repeated something three times, she never forgot it, and she didn’t want to forget anything about this night, despite its absurdity.

“ _Antonin_ ,” she breathed, relishing his tongue tracing her scar. “ _Antonin, Antonin –”_

“Why aren’t you _leaving_?” he interrupted, suddenly seeming almost irritated (she wasn’t sure whether with her or himself), grabbing her hands from his scalp and holding them tight in front of him. “You picked a safe word. Simply say it. I will get you home, or you can find a taxi – I’ll never speak of it to anyone. Do you not remember it?”

“Of course I do!” she said, a little insulted, yanking her hands back from him and sitting up on her elbows, pouting. “I’m not _that_ far gone. Remember, I chose it! Four syllables!?”

“Granger –”

“Call me by my first name, since we’ve graduated to that. I never get to hear it anymore.”

He sighed, but still didn’t pull out of her. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger, for the second time that night, and closed his eyes.

“Hermione. I’m a convicted criminal. I’ve escaped from Azkaban three times. I’ve killed, I’ve tortured, I’ve… _blyat,_ you were part of the ‘golden trio.’ We were mortal enemies. This,” he said, opening his eyes and pressing himself further inside her again, “while being most likely the best night of my entire miserable fucking life, is crazy, by any reckoning. I don’t want you regretting this, _L’venok.”_

“REGRETTING this?” she whooped with laughter. Shocking him, she squeezed him again, in every possible way, each muscle as tight as it could go. He gasped, and she leaned forward, grabbing him by both lapels of his somehow still remaining shirt.

“Let me make this clear to you, _Antonin_. You could have been Joseph fucking Stalin and I would not regret this night. Since you, due to circumstances more bizarre than I can fully comprehend right now, are actually the only person in my life at this precise moment that I can be _fully_ honest with, I will not try to play it cool and obscure from you that this has been the ‘best night of MY entire miserable fucking life,’ too. No other man has EVER made me feel like this, made me scream like this, made me _cum_ like this, and I am telling you, by the succubus Merlin Ambrosius _himself,_ that I’m going to make sure you get your bloody turn.”

She was yelling now, and she couldn’t make herself stop.

“I _want_ you to finish in me, and I am *not* about to let this end early due to the minor, utterly frivolous complication of us having been on opposite sides of a war!!!”

She let go of his lapels, taking a moment to steady her breathing.

“But…” he said, the current war he was waging against himself plastered all over his features, “I hunted you, Hermione.” He gestured to her stomach. “I _hurt_ you.”

“You _marked_ me,” she whispered, leaning up to lick his ear, “And I know you like it.”

Antonin grabbed her forcefully the shoulders, his mouth rigid, eyes aflame, fixing her with what she didn’t recognize in time as a look of warning.

“Now make it up to me, daddy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Hermione may have poked the bear. Next chapter will be uploaded tomorrow. :-)


	5. "Precious, Magnificent Whores Like You"

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Too late, Hermione realized she might have fucked up.

Before she could comprehend what was happening, her shirt and bra were gone – simply obliterated – and she had been tossed from the table on to the living room floor, arse up, on all fours. She was confused, taking in the feel of the antique rug under her hands and knees and missing the fullness of his cock inside her when she registered the first ruthless _thwack_ on her bottom. She turned her head back, eyes wide, blinking in utter shock. This was new – something none of her other mistakes had done to her – and she was still deciding how she felt about it, while taking in the uncovered glory of the man behind her. 

Antonin was now just as naked as she was, _thank Merlin,_ massaging the place where he’d hit her and staring into her eyes with a wildness he’d not yet displayed.

“You’re a fucking brat – that’s what you are, Hermione – and you need someone to keep you in line.” 

_Oh sweet Nicholas Flamel, yes, please, that’s exactly what I need._

“You’re a reckless little chatterbug who needs correction. You know who I am now, my name, my sins, what I’m capable of, and you _dare_ to talk to me like this?”

He raised his hand – _thwack_ , harder. 

“Ahhh-AHHH!,” she cried out, dropping her head, overwhelmed by the sensation – realizing how delectable it felt, the sudden sting followed by his other careful ministrations, and that she couldn’t muster up an ounce of shame. 

“I’ve cursed and killed your friends, _and you dare to lick my ear and tell me what I like?”_

_Thwack._

“ _Antonin!_ ” she whimpered, gasping for breath. They were getting more intense.

He squeezed her more tightly after the third time, with all five fingers, and then laughed, vicious and cold, sending a chill through every follicle on her skin.

“I’ve wanted to hear my name, just like that, since I looked up and saw you tonight, standing there...” He rubbed both cheeks sumptuously, kissing his way up her spine.

_Thwack._

“Morgan help me – FUCK!” He’d smacked her one more time, then moved both his hands underneath her, one into her core and one along her scar.

“Good thing you were right earlier – you *did* know what I like,” he whispered above her, pressing his middle finger between her folds. “I like precious, magnificent whores like you, clever little swots who are too cheeky for their own good, and if you think this –” 

Antonin dragged his fingernails upwards along the aubergine wound, eliciting a banshee wail she couldn’t have smothered even if she wanted to. 

“…is the only mark you’ll have from me by the time tonight is over, then you’ve got another thing coming. You had your chance to go, but you stayed, didn’t use the safe word I _graciously_ gave you, and then you mouthed off to me. Weren’t you supposed to be the brightest witch of your age?” he mocked, pumping two fingers inside of her now.

“I know, yes, I *am* a…cheeky swot, I…deserve it, I can’t…help it… ” she whined, wiggling her arse against him, wanting him back inside of her. 

“What do you deserve, Hermione?” he asked, his deep voice melting her, as he pulled her upward so he could assault her neck. She could barely breathe. It was all too much, what she knew now about him in a feeble battle against what she felt (his lips, his tongue, his teeth, his incredible hands). But this was what she’d wanted, what she’d given up on ever having, her most secret, locked-away fantasies of being wrecked, encompassed, owned – for once in her overly responsible life, _not_ having to be in charge.

“I deserve…to be claimed by you,” she breathed. “I deserve your marks on my body.”

“ _FUCK_ ,” he yelled, taking his huge cock in his hand and rubbing his thick tip against her entrance. “You’re making me _fucking insane,”_ he shouted in hot frustration.

She moved back into her original position, hands and knees on the rug, and looked up at him, heavy-lidded, as he lined himself up again, ready to plunge – but he hesitated.

“I don’t – I don’t trust myself. I want this too much.”

She leaned backward, humming, biting her lip. “Do you need me to beg, sir?”

He grabbed a chunk of her messy locks with his other hand and said through gritted teeth, “I don’t _have_ to make you beg, _dorogaya_ , because you’re already such a slut for me – the famed hunter of horcruxes is leaking on my _babushka’s_ antique rug.”

_Oops._

Releasing her tresses, he leaned in to touch her face, still turned towards him – she couldn’t get enough of seeing him naked. His thumb softly caressed her bottom lip. 

“But the last shred of decency left within me wants to give you one more chance, to extricate yourself from having a death eater blow his tainted load inside your lovely cunt.” 

She giggled into his calloused palm, but he was undeterred. 

“I’m only half joking. Think with that impressive brain of yours, _wed’ma_ – not just your body, not just whatever depraved magic I worked on you all those years ago.”

Through the thick, chocolate brown curtain of his hair, she could see a strange expression – half lustful and half worried. It was…oddly touching.

“Last chance, _krasavitsa_. Do you _really_ want this – now that you know my name?”

She smiled and pushed back harder, imbedding half of him inside her. He groaned.

“I want you to fuck me until I don’t remember my own.”

<> <> <> <> <>

She had barely finished her sentence before he’d grabbed a fistful of her hair again and shoved the rest of his dick inside her with an animalistic grunt.

“That’s it – I’m fucking twins into you tonight, _dorogaya._ Get ready.”

This sex was completely different from the table. 

Antonin drove into her pussy like he was punishing it, like the crazed death eater he once was, trying to torture something out of her – except that instead of information, he wanted bloodcurdling screams. And with the relentless thrusts that were hitting new spots inside of her, he was getting so many of them that Hermione thought she might lose her voice by the morning. (She hoped, distantly, that he’d cast a silencing spell before he’d joined her on the floor – otherwise, the police might be coming.)

The hair pulling was just right – giving _her_ just enough sensation without it being overly painful, and giving _him_ the reins to ride her. And ride her he did. Every time he hit her spot, it seemed harder and harder, and wild, primal exclamations were pouring out of his lips that made her wet beyond what she’d ever known she could be. She vaguely realized her own babbling was making less and less sense, but she couldn’t seem to stop it. 

“Fuck, Anto – thank you, thank you, dick – sweet Merlin – ”

“Don’t thank me little lioness. I’m… _ugh_ …going to destroy you for anyone else. Going to cum in you so hard you’ll… _ach!, blyat_ …have me inside you for days.”

“Give, yes, gods, please, ruin me Antonin, fucking bloody wrackspurts, fuck!”

He had lifted her up slightly, never stopping his onslaught, and wrapped his right hand firmly around her neck. She could still breathe – just barely.

“That’s it, Hermione, fucking take it. Good girl… ”

“MmmMmmMmmMmm!” She uttered, an elongated whine, accented each time he drove into her. His pace was getting faster and faster, and although she hadn’t thought it possible for him to get bigger Hermione could feel, to her immense pleasure, Antonin swelling inside her. She knew he was close now, and when he moved his right hand underneath to attack her clit again, his left hand still gripping her hip, he knew that she’d be right along with him.

“If you think I’ll let you leave now, you’re as crazy as me,” he growled, between panting.

“I don’t...want to leave!” she practically shrieked.

His hips moving faster and faster, it was rising again – her climax, even stronger this time.

“Say it again to me – I don’t care if you fucking mean it, just SAY IT – ”

“I don’t want to _leave_ , Antonin! Fucking _give_ it to me, please, just – ”

“ _AHHHH – FUCK! Ya chertovski lyublyu tebya,_ witch!”

Hermione shouted, with the last of her strength, joining his bearlike roar as he gripped both of her hips and they came, together – each spurt of his cum slamming into her cervix and elongating her high, stars flickering at the edges of her vision, a tear forming in the corner of one eye. She heard his ragged breathing and felt his arms wrap around her, holding her up – for some reason, her legs had stopped working – and gently lowering her to the old rug. The last things she remembered before passing out were his kiss to the back of her neck, his fingers running delicately through her hair, and the sound of his voice as he worshipped her with tender endearments in a tongue she couldn’t understand.

<> <> <> <> <>

For a while, Antonin simply laid on the rug beside her, holding her hand.

She was in a deep, quiet slumber, collapsed on her stomach, her head turned to the side. He, splayed on his back, looked at his dozing paramour as he tried, for quite a while, to catch his breath. (He was older, after all – he didn’t like to think about how many years he’d lost, so he didn’t dwell on it – and he was going to need a minute.)

Gazing on her face as he was now, he thought she looked…cherubic. He never would have guessed such a sweet mouth was capable of all he’d seen and heard that night. 

Antonin still couldn’t process everything that had happened to him over the last several hours – this manifestation of this goddess beside him, and her determination to have him in spite of all he used to be – but, for once in his life, he decided not to ruin it all with overthinking. He, too, was feeling the spectre of sleep attempting to overtake him, but there were a few items which needed his attention before he could surrender to it. 

With an exhausted grunt, Antonin rolled onto his hands and knees – he was glad she couldn’t see this part, as it was less than debonair – and crawled on his hands and knees to get his wand, which was poking out from under the refrigerator. He ran a few cleaning spells in specific places on their bodies, and he considered a contraception spell, as well, but ultimately decided she’d want to handle that on her own – and, for other reasons he was too tired to examine, he just didn’t want to perform it. 

Antonin thought of using the wand to levitate his little lioness to the bedroom, but something stubborn and idiotic inside him wanted to carry her, even though she wasn’t awake to witness his chivalry. She moaned and slowly wriggled as he lifted her, but her eyes stayed closed as she nuzzled into his chest, filling him with something warm and…foreign. Tucking her into his bed with the excessive pillows and fluffy comforter (Thorfinn had mocked him for that frivolous luxury, saying it was out of character, but he was awfully glad to have them now), he noted the late hour indicated at the clock on his bedside table and was overwhelmed with gratitude that he had the next day off.

Climbing in between the cotton sheets beside her, he waited to turn off the beside lamp – _just a few minutes_ , he told himself – to watch her, just to make sure she was real. 

He had no idea what the next day would bring, no idea how she would feel once she was clear of the alcohol and he was no longer touching her magicked scar, no idea if the cold light of day would render her ashamed, despite her earlier protestations.

In this instant, though, after switching off the lamp, all he could hear was her gentle breathing and the occasional car in the London street, barreling through the night. 

Right now, the future was open, and as he slipped into unconsciousness, the cranky Russian death eater once known as Antonin Dolohov almost allowed himself to hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. Unfortunately, Antonin has made one fatal miscalculation. You'll see in the next chapter. :-)


	6. "It Was an Experience"

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The first thing Hermione realized when she opened her eyes was that this ceiling did not belong to her. Her apartment was serviceable but basic, with a white painted popcorn ceiling. She was staring instead at rich oakwood planks, brown the color of –

His hair.

And then, in one frenzied recollection, it all came flooding back, drowning her again. 

She sat up in the large bed, feeling around for him, foolishly, as if he was hiding under the sheets like a lost button. Had he gone out and left her behind, with the tacit expectation that she was to put her clothes back on and conveniently exit his life?

She was still sitting there, stark naked, pouting at the possibility her past had conjured, when Antonin opened the bedroom door, carrying a tray and a flannel robe. 

She was pathetically relieved. 

His expression was shy, halting, as if he was approaching a wild rabbit. 

“I…brought you one of my robes and…made you breakfast. If you’d like to have some.”

He still looked so timid that, in contrast with the night before, she found it…cute.

“You mean to tell me,” she said, executing an extravagant, catlike stretch across his bed, “that you made _me,_ your ‘mortal enemy’, breakfast in bed?”

The smile that bloomed across his features was enough to warm her without a robe.

<> <> <> <> <>

Languishing in shared laughter as they rehashed the previous day, wrapped in his plaid flannel – an incongruous green and blue tartan, reminding her of “kilt man” – she stabbed the last bite of the heavenly _syrniki_ and blueberries he’d prepared with her fork. Normally, she tried to leave a part of her plate uneaten, but these were too good to abandon. 

Never in all her dreams or nightmares had she expected to share a handmade post-coital Russian breakfast with one of Voldemort’s most trusted lieutenants.

“How much earlier did you wake up than me in order to make these, Antonin? These are revelatory. I’m serious,” she said, in response to his shrug. “Thank you, truly.”

“I thought you’d need your resources replenished after such a thorough annihilation.”

She giggled, wiping her lips with the napkin, and lightly punched him in the arm. 

“Aren’t you cocksure?”

“But _krasavitsa_ – I have a strong memory. How could I forget you saying ‘No other man has EVER made me feel like this, made me scream like this, made me _cum_ like this…’”

“Allright allright allright _allright_ ,” she hurried, punching him harder, as he chuckled derisively. She nodded towards the breakfast tray at the foot of the bed, where, next to the empty plate, his wand rested. “Why did you put your wand on the tray?”

His brows furrowed as he promptly stood, taking both trays into the kitchen. When he returned, he did a brisk shake of the comforter for any crumbs and sat down beside her again, looking at the morning light filtering through the window curtains and sighing.

“To be honest, I wasn’t sure how you would react to being here. If you were upset, was going to offer to obliviate you, and take you back to your own flat so that you – ”

“NO!” she yelped, suddenly twisting around to end up on top of him, grasping his shoulders. “Please! If you want me gone, I’ll go, but don’t make me forget this.”

He rubbed his eyes with his hand and laughed ruefully, looking exhausted. For the first time, she tried to remember how much older than her he would be. She realized she must have worn him the hell out, but couldn’t manage to feel any guilt over it.

“Silly little witch…I meant every word I said last night. Why would I want you gone?”

“So did I. But…well, that seems to be what most men want from me. Afterward.”

“I am not,” he growled, gripping her waist through the flannel, “ _most men._ And I am also not going to hold myself back if you insist on mounting me without any underwear.”

Perhaps he was less worn out than she’d thought. He was in a white V neck and red fleece pajama pants, but through the fuzzy fabric she could already feel his response.

“Who said I wanted you to hold back?” she whispered, leaning her lips toward his own.

“You’re going to be the death of me, _dorogaya,_ and I probably deserve that,” he grumbled. Even low on sleep, dehydrated, and totally confused about whatever this was becoming, she still crumbled at the sound of that voice. He was reaching one hand up to grasp her chin before raising himself to meet her hungry, waiting mouth…

…and widening his eyes in horror as a raucous banging emanated from his front door.

_Boom! Boom! Boom!_

“ANTOSHKAAAAA!” she heard someone screech.

Hermione sighed, grumpily climbing off of him. “Please for the love of Beedle the Bard tell me that’s _not_ your wife. My heart can’t take it at this point.”

“No,” he said, standing and walking out of the bedroom, as if to his own grave.

“It’s worse.”

<> <> <> <> <>

Antonin didn’t remember until the damned cacophonous knocking interrupted the sweet kiss he was about to claim that he’d made an _enormous_ mistake the night before – aside from revealing himself to a former Order member, of course. 

He’d ensured that Hermione had texted her own friend before they left, but, in his lust-fuelled haste to get her home, he had completely forgotten to notify Thorfinn – who was currently in the midst of a one-man Viking raid on his apartment.

_Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom!_

“ANTY, we were supposed to be BROTHERS! How could you leave me behind?!?!”

Closing the bedroom door behind him, he ran to the front door and unlocked the deadbolt, but left the chain in place. He stared out, unamused, through a five-inch gap at the man who was his only friend but, on some occasions, was also his greatest bane.

“Hello Thor.”

“HELLO THOR? Don’t you HELLO THOR me,” he objected, trying to shove the door the rest of the way open. He had showered since his encounter with the “GMILF”s and stood before Antonin in his full Nordic resplendence, shiny and chrome.

Hermione didn’t need to see that.

(And Thor didn’t need to see Hermione – for completely different reasons.)

“What the bloody hell happened to you last night? And why won’t you open the door?”

“ _Blyat,_ Thor, can you please reduce the volume? I actually like this apartment and would prefer not to be evicted from it.” Rubbing his temples, he whispered a wandless silencing incantation he’d memorized years before, one that often seemed to come in handy when Thorfinn was around. “But I’m sorry I didn’t come find you,” he said. 

“You _worried_ me, you fucking prat,” Thor chided, leaning against the doorframe. He had, at least, lowered his voice. “I’m just glad to see you’re okay.”

“Yes, well, I…got entangled in something.”

“Some _body_ , more like! You fucking _champion_! I bloody told you this was a good idea!”

“Yes yes yes, it was a good idea,” Antonin mumbled, looking back towards the bedroom.

“I’m sorry – I couldn’t hear you. Speak up a bit please,” he gloated.

“Thor, I’ll be happy to give you all the praise your ego requires at a later time, but…”

“Ooooh!” he exclaimed, clapping his hands. “She’s still here, is she? Wanna share?”

“No I do NOT FUCKING WANT TO SHARE, THOR,” he barked, with icy vehemence.

“Oh come on – lemme meet her,” he said, leaning against the door. “You do, uhh, know this is useless against me, right, since we’re both, you know, wizards? _Alohomora!”_

Taking Antonin by surprise (he didn’t know Thor had his wand on him – it struck him as unusually well-prepared on his part), he shoved his way inside, and, to Antonin’s utter, visceral terror, was greeted by the sight of the girl who’d once obliviated him, standing, messy-haired and well-loved, in his plaid robe outside his bedroom door.

Thorfinn, in overt shock, looked at her, then looked at Antonin, then looked back at her.

“…you got entangled in _Princess?!_ ”

<> <> <> <> <>

In the immense chaos that ensued, Antonin managed to get Hermione deposited in one of his leather chairs in front of the fire that he’d built a few minutes before she awoke, and placed a fresh cup of coffee in her hands before dragging Thorfinn – still yelling “PRINCESS? You fucked PRINCESS?” – back out into the corridor.

Her expression inscrutable, but perhaps bordering on entertained, he said, “Please, Hermione – don’t go anywhere. I will deal with this. Just – give me a few minutes.”

He slammed the door behind him and stood facing Thorfinn, arms folded, in the hallway.

“Look,” he said, pausing to exhale a shaggy breath. “I know, Thor – and I’m sorry. I know I’m always the one you say is paranoid, the one who’s always on you about being more careful, and I _swear_ to you on my _babushka_ that neither of us knew until – ”

“Wait, wait, _comrade_ – ” Thorfinn said, putting a hand on Antonin’s shoulder. “You think I’m angry at you? I’m bloody well PROUD of you,” he whispered, leaning in closer and gesturing with his thumb toward the door. “I’ve been trying to pull that bird since we were in school together. Yeah, trust me, she’s the last girl I expected to see donning your bathrobe, but actually, ruminating on it, I think the two of you would work better than she and I would’ve anyway. You’re both huge fucking nerds.” He smiled.

Antonin blinked. “So…wait. You’re not going to kill her?”

“KILL her?!” Thorfinn hissed, then emitted his odd, high-pitched giggle. “We don’t do that anymore mate, remember? I’m _fun_ Thor now. This is _party_ Thor. Not murder Thor.”

The tension ebbed away from Antonin’s body as he accepted the boisterous hug that Thorfinn attacked him with. He had been readying himself to duel his best friend over the continued survival of Hermione Granger, based on just one night together.

“I’m serious, Anty. I’m happy for you. You needed this. It’s why I forced you to come with me to that club in the first place. But, uhh… _how was it?”_

Antonin fixed him with an admonishing expression, raising an eyebrow.

“Okay, well, obviously you don’t want to tell me with her sitting on the other side of the wall, I get it – but you owe me details, brother, at our next pint.”

Thorfinn cocked his head to the side and scratched his scalp.

“What will you, uhh, do now? Is it one-and-done, or are you thinking of…”

Antonin shrugged. “I think we’re in the process of figuring that out,” he said. “I know this sounds fucking bonkers, Thor…but I don’t _want_ it to be over.”

“Told you – meant for each other. Huge fucking nerds.” 

Thorfinn grinned and hugged him again, more tightly, then released him, tapping him gently on his cheek. “I’ll let you get back to it, then. Just remember that I get to be the friend who delivers the toast at the wedding.”

Antonin laughed as Thor started to walk down towards the elevator. 

“Thor, I _have_ no other friends.”

“Yeah,” he said, pressing the button, “but I’m still your best one.”

And, as he entered the elevator with a cavalier wave, Antonin knew he was right.

<> <> <> <> <>

Hermione, snickering softly, took the time that presented itself for a quick trip to the loo; when she was finished, she walked to the shelf by the door and retrieved her phone, maneuvering back to the comfortable old living room chair in front of the fire.

So Thorfinn Rowle was alive, too.

She was glad, in a way. As much as he’d driven her up the wall when they were students, and the little confrontation in the café aside, she never got the sense that Thorfinn could possibly be as dyed-in-the-wool evil as someone like Pettigrew or Bellatrix. She had learned after the fact that many death eaters were forced to take the mark by their parents, as Draco had been, and she wondered if that had been the case for him. She guessed now that _he_ had been the friend who had dragged Antonin to the club last night, in which case she felt nothing towards him in this moment but amiable gratitude.

Thinking of being dragged to the club by optimistic compatriots made her remember Kenny. She checked her phone messages and, sure enough, there was a text from him.

**“Well? Don’t leave me in suspense, pet. How did it go?”**

Hermione smiled and texted back, **“It was an experience.”**

He responded with a series of laughing emojis.

**“How was your gentleman in the black suit?”** she replied.

**“Divine. Not sure I can walk today, but worth it. I somehow mysteriously missed the glowing text from you that said, ‘THANK YOU, KENNY!!! <3 <3 <3’ You’d better give me all the details on Monday, Jeannie Beannie. Enquiring minds…”**

Shaking her head, she typed out, **“I will. And thank you, Kenny. Really.”**

Hermione was going to end the conversation there, but her damnable curiosity compelled her to write one more addendum – just for closure.

**“P.S. – Kenny, I’m sorry to ask this, as it’s a long shot, but there was a man there last night – not the one I came home with – with orange-red hair. He was muscular, in a V-neck and a green mask. Have you seen him there before?”**

She saw the three dots on her phone indicating that Kenny was typing.

**“Yeah, we call him Sweeper. Got drunk once and tried to ride the broomstick around the club once like a witch, for some reason. He’s been coming for years.”**

Well, that explained a lot.

She would have to think of something nice to do for Kenny later, to show him how much she truly did appreciate him – and she’d have to decide what details, exactly, were safe for sharing. She put her phone in the robe pocket and sipped her coffee, staring into the fireplace and thinking again over the last several hours – what it revealed about her, what she felt about Antonin Dolohov, and what she wanted now. 

The answer, although perhaps nonsensical, came easily.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. No sex in this chapter, but for the last chapter, don't worry – I'll be back on my bullshit. :-)
> 
> 2\. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, to everyone who has left kudos and comments (both on here and on facebook) thus far. It means more to me than I can put into words, and has genuinely thrilled me.


	7. "Because I Want This Insanity"

<> <> <> <> <>

Antonin opened the door and closed it, locking it behind him again. As he walked to the coffeemaker to pour himself a cup, he looked across the room and saw Hermione's face; she’d swiveled around in the old leather chair to bless him with a brilliant smile. 

“I have to say that I’m quite a fan of your fireplace, Antonin.”

He was bathed in sheer relief. 

“It’s a perk of living on the top floor, I suppose,” he returned, breathing easier.

Sauntering over to his other leather chair, he grinned sheepishly.

“What’s that face for?” she asked, tapping the empty seat, encouraging him to join her.

“I’m…frankly, I’m glad you didn’t use my wand to apparate out of here.”

“Knowing your reputation, it’s likely booby trapped to shock anyone but you,” she said. 

Sitting down and lifting the cup to his lips, he froze, staring at the flames.

“What?” she asked.

He took a sip and shook his head. “I’m irritated that I didn’t think of that myself.”

She laughed – a sound he could easily get used to. “Percy Shelly did it to his dorm room door, when he was in school, to keep out bullies and other undesirables.”

He nodded, appraising her. “‘Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair.’”

She nodded back at him, then pointed at all of the jam-packed shelving in the living room, which, he reflected, had really become more of a library. “I will not pretend to be unimpressed by all the books here. I’ve been perusing them while you were out.”

“Oh?” he replied, taking another sip. He noticed that she took it black, like he did.

“I’m pleased that there’s just as much literature as there is science and maths in these shelves. I can discern that this section – ” she said, pointing to the farthest column, “is illusioned to look like law treatises. Although I can’t see what’s behind the glamour, I’m assuming that’s where the tomes of magic and spellcraft are. Smart of you to obscure it.”

Crossing one leg over the other, Antonin waved his hand and mumbled a particular incantation, revealing the true shelf to her. He could already deny her nothing. Her eyes glittered like a child walking into a toy store for the first time.

“Before I lose you for the rest of the day in my impressive collection,” he teased, “I…suppose now would be as good a time as any to ask each other some questions.”

Her head snapped back to him and he could see an embarrassed flush on her features, but knowing that her reputation for an egregious love of learning was accurate only drew him more to this woman he was now, insanely but irrevocably, thinking of as “his witch.”

“Fair enough,” she said, placing her cup down on the small glass table in front of them and returning her hands to her lap. “How did you know I was a Gryffindor?”

He barked a bitter laugh. “That’s not what I expected you to start with.”

“I just…I remember you calling me a ‘brave little Gryffindor bitch’ when you thought I had been sent here to apprehend you, and I wasn’t sure how you knew.”

“Not my finest moment, _krasavitsa_ , for which I am sincerely sorry.” 

He reached over and squeezed her hand, rubbing his thumb in her palm, looking into her brown eyes – trying his best to convey that his apology was earnest. Even now, with all their secrets unveiled, he was still as drawn to her touch as he had been the night before. He wanted more than anything to grab her, pull her into his lap, trace needy kisses down her neck to her breasts…but he was conscious of seeming too desperate, too soon, and was waging a battle with himself in order to be civilized.

“As for your question, you must remember that I was _hunting_ you, for a while…It was my job to know a bit about you, about all three of you, and to track you down.” 

“Would you be shocked to know,” she said, squeezing his hand back, “that the ex you rescued me from at the bar was another member of the golden trio? Ron Weasley?”

Antonin blinked. He chose not to vocalize what he was thinking in that moment – that he wished he’d gone ahead and killed him right there. 

Instead he took another sip of coffee and shook his head. “I suppose I should have recognized him even with the mask, but he looks…different. So did you. I knew, all night, that there was something familiar about you, but I guess I never expected to see the pure, prudent Hermione Granger in…well…a place like the one we were in.”

“Oh trust me, I didn’t expect to ever see myself there, either. But I have to admit I was the one hunting _you_ last night, Antonin. My friend pointed you out from across the ballroom, and I spent a long while making my careful approach before I…pounced.” 

He smiled, remembering how she’d appeared out of nowhere, how he’d felt the pulse of her magic but had been expecting the ghost of Mad-Eye Moody. “You know who _my_ friend was.” He paused, as they both chortled. “Who brought _you_ to the club?”

“My best friend Kenny, from work – the one you saw when you rifled through my memories last night. Nothing for you to worry about. He’s gay.”

He wasn’t sure to be embarrassed about being so transparent or pleased that she was already anticipating his reactions. “Well, I owe him.” He raised his cup in a mock toast. “You also said, earlier, when I…” he hesitated. “Who is the one person from the ‘old days’ you still talk to?” He dreaded hearing the answer that he thought he already knew.

Hermione, confirming his fears, pulled her face into a grimace – half funny, half afraid.

“Fucking _damnit,”_ he said, rubbing his neck, a wave of prickling of panic starting to make its way through the hair follicles there. “He’s…he’s an auror now, isn’t he – ” 

“I won’t tell him!” she yelped. “I promise you, Antonin, on my dead cat – ”

He couldn’t restrain a morbid chuckle at that.

“ – that I’m _not_ going to rat you out. I don’t want that for myself or for you. Though I don’t know your whole story – and I do want to hear it one day – I know that you've _done_ your time, in a way that no one, no matter how wretched, should _ever_ have had to. It was barbaric, what Azkaban used to be. No wonder it made people into monsters.”

He realized how intensely he must have been staring at her when she came to a pause and looked up at the books again, a bit anxiously. Her grace, more than anything else she’d given him during the last few hours, had shocked him to his core.

“He thinks I killed Fenrir’s packmate, his mentor,” he said, quietly. “They all do.”

“Lupin?” she asked. “You didn’t? What about the Prewetts?”

Antonin sighed, meeting her eyes again. “The former, no. The latter…yes. But the circumstances were…complex. Both of these might be stories for a different day.”

“That’s fair,” she said, with outstanding calm. “We’ll have all the time we need talk.”

_They’d have all the time they’d need_ , she had said. 

That phrase breathed life into the deepest, most secret hopes that he’d tried to crush all morning, but he tried to move on before he ended up nurturing them too much.

“In essence, I’ve not made it this far without being excessively, meticulously careful, and I think your one remaining wizard friend will stun me before I got a chance to blink.”

“You think he could get the drop on you?” she teased, crossing her legs.

“I mean, no, OBVIOUSLY – a figure of speech, of course. I’d _destroy_ him,” he scoffed.

“Well, trust me, Antonin – I don’t think it will be an issue. I _never_ see him in person; we just text back and forth from time to time, send each other memes and whatnot. He’ll always have a huge part of my heart,” she said, as Antonin tried to stop himself from mentally compiling a “Harry Potter Annihilation” task list, “but he’s busy with his family life now and…things between his wife and myself got awkward when I – ” She stammered, closing her eyes and tenting her hands in an innocent gesture that contrasted with the images from last night that kept playing on repeat in his head. 

“She didn’t like how I extricated myself from the wizarding world. She said I was… abdicating my responsibilities.” She shook herself, shrugging off the old hurts like bits of snow. “So, long story short, I don’t think there’s any reason he’ll be a complication.”

For some strange reason, rather than obsessing over the fear, Antonin took a deep breath and decided to let it lie for now. That could be a problem for next year’s Antonin, if this got that far. He was still curious about something else, though, remembering the snippets of her new routine that he’d witnessed inside her head.

“You said…before…that you’d left it all behind. Do you mind if I ask why?”

Hermione stretched out her legs to tangle her feet with his own, taking a breath – he could see the gears turning in her head as she organized her response.

“Partly the…trauma of everything.”

Antonin understood that, more than he felt able to articulate.

He leaned one elbow on the chair arm, nodding for her to continue.

“Everyone had their own way of dealing with it – I mean, you saw Ron’s. I know this sounds selfish, Antonin, but I felt like I’d done my part, more than my part in truth, and I didn’t owe them anything anymore. It was just healthier for me to rip off the band-aid and…” She shrugged. “The trappings and intricacies of that old life, which once had…excited me so much…they lost their meaning to me. I’m sorry,” she said, shaking a little. He ran his hand up and down her forearm, tenderly. “It just feels so strange to be talking about this with anyone when I spend every hour of every day – ”

“Pretending none of it ever happened,” he supplied. He knew damn well. 

She nodded, taking a moment. As surreal as this entire conversation was for him, he could imagine that it might be even moreso on her end. He was still forcing himself not to caress her more, not to drag her toward him, not to bury his face in her warm chest.

“Don’t get me wrong,” she continued. “I’m still a witch, I still do magic, and I still endeavor to learn more and more of it, in private – but I started going by my middle name, Jean, and never looked back. Kenny and some other people call me Jeannie.”

Antonin focused on the reflections of the flames dancing in her eyes as she said, “I’d prefer that you keep calling me Hermione, though, if that’s allright.”

Antonin noted that her use of the word “keep” further indicated the possibility of a continuation. _Damned blasted shitty fucking cuntfaced hope._

Hermione looked over into the fire, still burning but faltering now – he would need to feed it. “Do you have a new name? And what have you been doing all this time?”

His coffee finished, he placed his cup on the table next to hers and stood. As he stacked more logs in the fire and stoked it, he said, “After Thorfinn and I escaped Azkaban together, the last time, we’ve just tried to keep a low profile. He wants to stay in London – if not for that, I might have gone back to Russia by now. I just feel…”

“…responsible for him?” she finished.

The fire blazing to his satisfaction, he sat back down, nodding. “He’s younger than me – you know that, I suppose, since he so eloquently reminded me you were at Hogwarts together – and I worry he’s going to get himself caught again. I feel like he…I am trying to remember the phrase in English. He’s ‘a loose cannon on deck’ sometimes.”

“That much hasn’t changed,” she said, beaming at him. He loved seeing it.

“…but I…must concede he has also kept me going. I might have…I don’t want this to lessen my overwhelming machismo in your eyes, after my triumph of last night…”

She cackled.

“…but I might have surrendered to despair at various points, without Thorfinn to prod me onwards. He’s harassed me into staying alive, essentially. We both have our family funds squirreled away, but, to fill the time, we work security at a…sort of fancy high-rise, basically residential bouncers with bland uniforms. And to answer your other question, at my job, and when I pay my bills, I go by Anthony Birch. Thorfinn goes by Donner now, which is just ‘Thor’ in old German…but,” he said, taking her hands in his, “like you mentoned a minute ago…for you, as long as you’ll deign to say it, I want to be Antonin. It’s…good…to find another person I don’t have to lie to.”

For her answer, Hermione brought his hands to her lips and, gently, kissed his fingers. Antonin hadn’t thought he had much of a heart left until those simple, painful, dangerous little gestures from her reminded him it was still beating. 

With a shy grin, she pulled her hands away and scooted her chair as close as she could to his, but then cocked her head to the side. “Why Birch, if I may ask?”

“It’s silly, I suppose. I didn’t even tell Thor this, but…I had to pick something rather quickly and…I thought of the trees that surround my childhood home.”

She leaned forward, giving him a prime view of her breasts through the gaping robe. 

“It’s quite illuminating, _Antonin,_ ” she whispered, flipping her hair to the side, “to discover that one of the most feared death eaters in all of England has such a sweet side.”

That did it. 

“Don’t get used to it, little witch, when you lean over and whisper my name like that,” he growled, picking her up in one big pelican swoop and depositing her squarely on his lap. “You know precisely what you do to me, don’t you, you incorrigible chit?”

She giggled, sighing as he wrapped his arms around her. 

“I see that my seat got upgraded.”

“Play your cards right and you might move up to first class,” he said, angling his head back towards the bedroom. He felt her laughter ripple through her chest as his fingers, desperation be damned, snuck their way to the robe’s knot and untied it. 

Hermione made a soft mewling sound as the robe fell open, her nipples hardening when exposed, and lifted her chin to give his lips access to her neck. He tasted her again, relishing every bit of her flesh underneath his tongue. The marks he’d left the night before brought his cock to attention, but he needed to ask her something – needed to affirm that someone had seen him at his worst, in every way, and chosen not to run.

“Did I go too far last night, _dorogaya_ …my Hermione?”

She swiveled right around to face him, his spitfire. “Did I say _‘Stolichnaya’_ , Antonin???”

He kissed her then, with all his longing, all his loneliness – kissed her with every day he’d spent in a cold, dank cell, every wrong he’d committed, every hope he’d lost, every curse he’d created and cast into the void, all of it, his life bared through his lips. This was a kiss he never thought he’d have, a kiss he knew he never earned, but he held on to her for dear life as she whimpered into his mouth, wriggling on top of him. 

When they came up for air, dizzily, she fell back against his chest and he, breathing hard, moved his hands almost without conscious intention to cover the scar on her stomach, again feeling the blissful jolt he’d felt each time before. He’d have to do some research on this – but that was for another day, a day without a siren in his lap.

“You didn’t go too far,” she breathed, standing up, turning to face him, and dropping the robe from her body, letting it pool at her feet. “You were just what I needed.”

His jaw outright dropped. Something about seeing her standing before him in all her glory, backlit by the flames and staring him down, challenging him, daring him to take her – it was more than he would ever be able to put into words, in either language.

“And that pronoun you put in front of my name is something I could get used to.”

“Hermione,” he rasped, as she pulled off his pants, rather viciously, and crawled on top of him in the blessedly large chair. It was difficult to concentrate as she straddled him, lifted off his shirt, and reached down to twist his rock hard cock in her hand. Even regular breathing was requiring more focus as she placed his tip at her tight entrance, emanating a sacred heat that he knew he would need again, and again, and again. 

“But…” he managed to whisper. 

“But what, Antonin?” she parried, still rubbing him, holding him in place.

He took her face in his hands. Words…words were hard. “This is _crazy.”_

“And how is that a deviation from the rest of our lives?”

She had him there. Smiling wickedly, she lowered herself, inch by ethereal inch. He uttered some kind of gutteral, unconfined noise he’d never heard himself make before as she adjusted to his size from this new angle, arching her back.

“We can’t…” he said, in between kissing her breasts, her collarbones, the top of her purple mark, “just…fuck…every time we don’t want to…confront the insanity of this.” 

He had no idea why he was being an idiot, except perhaps that he still couldn’t fathom that Hermione Granger was taking his cock for a second time, in his own bloody home, and he just needed one more assurance – one more promise that he wouldn’t sink into this woman, claim her, and get addicted to her, only for her to disappear.

“I’m fucking you…because I _like_ it.” She started to move up and down, slowly at first.

“Mmmmmmmmgggggrrrrr,” he moaned into her chest, his eyes rolling up in his skull.

“I’m fucking you because I _want_ …this insanity. Because it’s the only time I’ve actually… _felt_ something in…years. And when we aren’t having sex…you can – ” She increased her pace, finding a rhythm, and every time she crashed back down on to him it was so mind-meltingly good. He was trying to restrain himself from crying out each time, pressing his lips into her body, raking his teeth and tongue across her skin, insatiable.

“You can…teach me…spells. We can…make some, together. You can cook for me…and eat what…I make for you. You can share your…books with me. You can take me home…to see your birch trees. You can argue with me, and then make up with me, like this. You can talk to me about anything…anything at all, and I….will listen. You – _ahhh?”_

It was a lewd, limitless sound that ripped away any last objections his anxiety could supply. He started lifting his hips to meet her, crushing her own in his grip.

“But… _fuck_ , Antonin, yes, _just like that…”_

After a minute, she paused her ruthless rhythm to lean down close to his ear, kissing and nipping the lobe, which fried any of his remaining brain cells. 

“But right now, right this second,” she whispered, plaintively, “I’m fucking you because I want to be your good girl again. And I know this is what _you_ want, isn’t it?”

“ _Ty vse, chto ya khochu, krasavitsa,”_ he grunted, pushed over the edge once more – grabbing her legs, lifting her, maintaining his tight placement inside of her, and slamming them both into the carefully arranged wall of bookshelves. Novels and textbooks plummeted onto the floor around them as he drove into her like his life depended on it. 

It was too late for him, he knew then – he already _was_ addicted, come hell or high water. 

She dug her fingernails into his scalp, shrieking encouragements like a righteous valkyrie, until all he knew was this moment – being buried to the hilt in her pressing, perfect warmth; her melodious wails, the crackling of the fire; the scent of her hair, of strawberries, of aged paper and bindings; the electrifying contact with her supple skin. This was his world, from this day forward, whether he deserved it or not.

Antonin wasn’t ready to say it in English, what he already knew he felt for her.

All he could declare, before smothering Hermione – yes, _his_ Hermione, his _L’venok_ – in another scorching kiss and fucking her halfway into a stupor, was this: 

“My hands are not empty anymore.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. The Percy Shelley poem Antonin quotes is "Ozymandias." 
> 
> 2\. Hermione in this chapter: "I never snitch on Daddy.."
> 
> 3\. Well, here we are. I genuinely cannot express to you how grateful I am for the kudos and, especially, the thoughtful comments you've left on this piece. I didn't really expect anyone to notice this. At this risk of oversharing, I'm in an odd period in my life – displaced from home for a year, doing a job remotely that's really meant to be done in person, and trying to recover from several random health issues – and I took a break from both of my ongoing novel projects to write this. I just want you to know that, every time I got a notification and read the incredibly kind words that you took time out of your day to write, it made me forget I was hurting at all. Each one of you has been a huge blessing to me over this last week. *Spasibo.*
> 
> 4\. Feels kind of shameful and pathetic to put a plug here, but if you liked this story and would be interested in seeing *future* Antonin/Hermione stories from me, maybe just maybe give me a follow and I'll deliver! I'm working on the next one right now. I also post in the Death Eater Groupies and Death Eater Express facebook groups under Marion Boone (not my real name, either), if you want to be pals. In the mean time, thank you again, from the bottom of my nerdy heart, and stay safe out there.


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